Any deconstruction of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s recent podcast with Lex Fridman, a conversation driven by delusions and powered by platitudes, could be an offence to reason. But since journalists are expected to follow their leaders’ enterprises, even at the cost of consuming soporifics, we managed to salvage a few gems.
Fridman begins the three-hour chat with a culinary admission: “Main aapko batana chahunga ki maine upvas rakha hai (I would like to tell you that I am fasting). It’s been almost two days, 45 hours. So just water, no food, in honour of this conversation, just to get into the right mindset.”
That’s a 24-carat touchstone in the art of journalism which should shame even great method actors. Enamoured by the fact that his interviewee observes fasts during certain days of the year, he decided to impose it upon his innards. The interviewee, though, is a celibate for life. If one wondered whether the interviewer may want to try the celebrated practice, Fridman goes even deeper towards the end and makes a humble submission: “I was wondering if you could guide me perhaps, through a Hindu prayer or meditation for a few moments.”
Fridman underlines that he has been “trying to learn the Gayatri mantra”, and did some chanting even during the “fast”. Eager to confirm his truthfulness, he points to his stomach before the camera, a visceral evidence of his fasting, and then asks Modi to teach him the significance of mantras.
After enlightening his American disciple about mantras and meditation, the prime minister shares his grand vision of journalism: journalists should be like honeybees and not a fly (makkhi nahin, madhumakkhi). “A makkhi sits on filth, carries and spreads filth everywhere. Madhumakkhi sits on the flower, and spreads nectar… a madhumakkhi also stings people, those who do wrong,” informs the prime minister.
We sifted through the names the honourable PM has granted an audience in the last decade, but could barely find journalists who have stung him.
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Has the PM entertained and promoted only makkhis? We dare not infer. But we do wish that when he proposed ‘criticism as the soul of democracy’, the American asked him about the dissenters languishing in Indian prisons or facing fabricated legal cases in the last decade.
Never mind, because Fridman declares in his introduction that he is interviewing a leader who builds bridges and doesn’t burn them. “I have heard that he treats everybody he meets in a sympathetic way, no matter where they come from,” Fridman tells us. We are proud to discover this facet about our leader, but we wish when the prime minister dismissed the Gujarat riots, Fridman had asked him about the ‘sympathy’ inherent in the ‘pup’ remark that he had made years ago.
But if the interviewer cannot be accused of an inquisitive spirit, the prime minister’s naïve followers must not be held accountable for presenting his ramblings as profound pronouncements on foreign policy.
In another segment of the podcast, we learn about his deep friendship with the US president, studded with charming visuals of the two leaders, without any mention of the tariffs announced by the occupant of the White House that will cause tremendous loss to the Indian industry, or about the humiliating deportation of Indians.
While major democracies find Trump 2.0 disruptive and unreliable, our prime minister asserts that Trump is ‘is far more prepared’ and has a ‘clear roadmap, with well-defined steps’ in his second term. Several democracies are deeply suspicious of Trump’s new team, but for our leader it’s a ‘strong capable group’.
Such are the attempts to forge affinity that our Vishwaguru ends up praising DOGE and its boss Elon Musk, who is facing severe backlash across Europe. The sale of Tesla has gone down in the continent, but the prime minister tells his interlocutor that he had known Musk since his days as the Gujarat chief minister, and the philosophy of DOGE is deeply integrated into governance under his administration.
Perhaps it was this profundity that couldn’t attract enough viewers for the conversation, which was released in several languages – spoken by the AI-powered voices of both the men – on their YouTube channels. Our PM’s YouTube channel has 27.3 million subscribers, over six times than 4.6 million of Fridman’s channel. But it gathered 13.21 lakh views on Fridman’s channel, thrice more than 4.07 lakh views on the platform of the prime minister of the most populous nation.
Since one is allowed an alternative reality in our times, can we imagine a parallel interview with a journalist? The PM narrated to Fridman an episode about goddess Kali and Vivekananda which deeply inspired him. There’s another, and more famous episode, about the saint and his deity.
During a visit to Kashmir in the 1890s, Vivekananda was greatly distressed to find temples vandalised by “Mohammedan invaders”. At the famous Kheer Bhawani temple, he told himself: “How could the people have permitted such sacrilege without offering strenuous resistance? If I were here then I would have never allowed such things. I would have laid my life to protect the Mother.”
And then, goddess Kali appeared to chastise him: “What, even if unbelievers should enter My temples, and defile My images? What is to you? Do you protect me? Or do I protect you?”
On another occasion at the Kheer Bhawani, he “was brooding with pain on the dilapidated condition of the temple”, and wished to build a new one here as he had already done at Belur.
Once again the Mother Goddess emerged: “My child! If I so wish I can have innumerable temples… I can even at this moment raise a seven-storied golden temple on this very spot.” The words were epiphanic and transformative.
Vivekananda felt that “all my patriotism is gone. Everything is gone.” He was “transfigured”, and became a true “monk, in the nakedness of sannyasa”.
That’s a tale of Hinduism the Indian leader and his American interlocutor could have turned to. But since the prime minister prefers podcasters to journalists, we shall restrain until we are bestowed with an audience.
