#460 – Narendra Modi: Prime Minister of India – Power, Democracy, War & Peace

**Lex Fridman** (0:00)
The following is a conversation with Narendra Modi, the Prime Minister of India. It was one of the most moving conversations and experiences of my life. Allow me here to say a few words about it. Please skip ahead straight to our conversation if you like. Narendra Modi's life story is incredible. He rose from poverty to lead a nation of 1.4 billion people, the biggest democracy in the world, where he won epic scale elections for Prime Minister three times. As a leader, he fought for ideas that unite his nation of India, a nation that is composed of a large number of highly varied and disparate cultures and peoples who have a long history marked by religious, social and political frictions. He's known for taking decisive, at times controversial actions, for which he is loved by hundreds of millions of people and is also criticized by many. We discuss all of this at length in this conversation. On the world stage, he is respected as a peacemaker and friend by most major world leaders, even those whose nations are at war with each other. From United States to China, to Ukraine and Russia, to Israel, Palestine and the Middle East, and everywhere else.
Now, at this moment in history, it is clear, at least to me, that the flourishing of human civilization hangs in the balance, with several wars on the brink of escalation to regional and even global conflict, rising tensions between nuclear powers, technological developments from AI to nuclear fusion that aim to completely transform society and geopolitics as we know it, and of course, generally, increasing political and cultural turmoil. So now, more than ever, we need great leaders, great peacemakers, who build bridges, not destroy them, who may preserve the identity of their nations, but still celebrate the common humanity of all of us, all people on earth. For this and many other reasons, this conversation with Prime Minister Modi was one of the most remarkable I've ever had. You may hear such words and think that I'm just enamored by power or access. No, never was, never will be. I do not idolize anyone, especially those in power. I'm generally skeptical of power, money and fame because of their natural, corrupting influence on the mind, the heart, the soul of a person. The whole point of all the conversations I've had in my life, on mic and off mic, is that I try to see and explore the full complexity of every human being, the good and the bad. I believe we're all the same in a deep fundamental sense, all capable of good, all capable of evil, all carry stories of pain and stories of hope.
Whether you're a world leader or a truck driver, a coal miner or a farmer in the American Midwest, and by the way, I will be talking to a lot of the latter kind of folk this year off mic, and maybe even on mic as I travel the US and the world. My brief statements here about Narendra Modi are about both him as a leader and especially him as a human being. In the extensive time I spent with him and spoke with him off mic and on mic, it was a deeply personal human interaction characterized by warmth, kindness, humor, inner and outer peace, and absolute focus on the conversation between us in the present moment as if nothing else existed. I have heard from many people that he treats everyone he meets in this empathic way. No matter where they come from or what their position is in this world. So, for those and many other reasons, this really was an incredible experience I will never forget. Oh, and by the way, we made captions and voiceover audio tracks available in English, Hindi, and other languages. You can also listen to the original mixed language version where I speak English, and Prime Minister Modi speaks Hindi. Separately, you can choose to turn on subtitles in your preferred language. On YouTube, you can switch between language audio tracks by clicking the settings gear icon, then clicking audio track, and then selecting the language you prefer. For fully English overdub, select English. For fully Hindi overdub, select Hindi. And to listen to the original mixed language version where I speak English, and Prime Minister Modi speaks Hindi, please select Hindi-Latin audio track. So you can listen either to a version that is all one language, or to the original mixed language version with subtitles in your preferred language. The default is English overdub. Where thanks to 11 Labs and a great team of translators, we do our best to bring the Prime Minister's voice to life with AI voice cloning in English. I promise that we will continue to work very hard to break down the barriers that language creates and try to make these conversations as accessible as possible to everyone in the world. Anyway, let me pause one more time to say a big thank you. What a wild ride this life has been. It's an honor for me to be on it with all of you. I love you all. And now, a quick few second mention of each sponsor. Check them out in the description. It is in fact the best way to support this podcast. We got BrainFM for Focus, Shopify for Merch, Masterclass for Learning, NetSuite for your business, AG1 for your health and element, for your electrolytes. What else can I say? Choose Wyzen, my friends. Also, if you want to get in touch with me, for whatever reason, go to lexfridman.com/contact. There's a bunch of links on there, like AMA or guest suggestions or hiring. Still looking for world class translators. Way harder than I thought it would be, because it really, really, really matters. AI is still quite far away from being able to translate, especially these high stakes conversations to really capture the nuance that's necessary, the humanity that's necessary. Anyway, now is the part where I do the full ad reads. If you want to skip them and hurt my heart, no, you're not going to hurt my heart. Go ahead and skip them. It doesn't really matter. But I do try to make them interesting. I do try to say stuff in there that's maybe about my life, about kind of like Mark Merritt on WTF talks about his cats and various things of that nature in the beginning. And some people love it, some people hate it. But the people who care or are just laying on the floor, too lazy to skip ahead. Here we are, friends. Let's get into it. But either way, please do check out the sponsors. It really is the best way to support the podcast. I enjoy their stuff.