The Congress party took a swipe at Prime Minister Narendra Modi over his latest podcast with computer scientist Lex Fridman. In an about three-hour conversation with Fridman, released on Sunday, PM Modi spoke about his childhood, diplomacy, leadership, and relationships with global leaders, including US President Donald Trump and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin.
Modi praised the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh(RSS), the ideological mentor of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), for instilling patriotic values in him, lauded Mahatma Gandhi‘s legacy and described himself as a peacemaker who has nudged both Russian and Ukrainian leaders to come to the negotiating table.
Reacting to the podcast, Congress general secretary, communications, Jairam Ramesh hit out at Modi for saying “criticism is the soul of democracy” while accusing him of “demolishing” institutions that were to hold his government accountable and having gone after critics “with a vengeance”.
“He who is afraid of facing the media in a press conference has found comfort in a foreign podcaster anchored in the rightwing ecosystem,” Ramesh said.
Sunday’s episode of the Lex Fridman podcast is PM Modi’s second podcast appearance. Earlier, in January, Modi had a discussion with Zerodha co-founder Nikhil Kamath in a podcast.
‘Systematically gutted every institution’
“And he has the gall to say that ‘criticism is the soul of democracy’ when he has systematically gutted every institution that is to hold his government accountable and gone after critics with a vengeance that no one in recent history has matched!” Ramesh wrote on X.
PM Modi said in Lex Fridman’s podcast that he welcomes criticism. “I have a strong belief that criticism is the soul of democracy. I want to tell all the young people the following: No matter how dark the night may seem, it is still just night, and morning is bound to come,” Modi said in response to questions on criticism, mostly around the 2002 Gujarat riots.
He who is afraid of facing the media in a press conference has found comfort in a foreign podcaster anchored in the rightwing ecosystem.
“Hypo(d)crisy ki koi seema nahi hai! (There is no limit to Hypo(d)crisy,” Ramesh said in a play of words “Hypocrisy ki bhi koi seema hoti hai” once used by the prime minister himself.
Before Modi, global personalities including US President Donald Trump, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and Argentinian Prime Minister Javier Milei, tech moguls Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos and Sam Altman and public intellectuals like Yuval Noah Harari have appeared in the Lex Fridman’s podcast
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