'I am human, not God': PM Modi during debut podcast with Zerodha co-founder

New Delhi: "I am a human, I may make mistakes, but I will not make mistakes with bad intentions," Prime Minister Narendra Modi said Friday while appearing as a guest in a popular podcast. 

During his conversation with Zerodha co-founder Nikhil Kamath, in the latter's podcast series ‘People By WTF', Modi touched upon a range of topics, including his childhood, his stint as Gujarat chief minister, India's global standing in various fields, social media, and politics and its parallels with entrepreneurship. 

This was Modi's first appearance in a podcast.

The session saw the PM reflecting on a previous speech from his tenure as Gujarat chief minister. "When I became the CM (of Gujarat), I gave a speech. I said publicly that people commit mistakes, I also do, I am a human, I am not a God."  

Modi's remark came months after he invited criticism for saying "he is not biological, but sent by God" during an interview with a news channel in the run-up to the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. 

Reacting to Modi's statement in the podcast, Congress leader Jairam Ramesh said the PM was doing damage control now after he proclaimed himself as "non-biological".

Earlier, Kamath began the podcast by clarifying that his mother tongue was not Hindi and he might make mistakes. The PM, with a chuckle, said he, too, was not a native Hindi speaker. "We both will go on like this," he said.

Kamath shared his personal perspective about the prevalent negative perception about politics, saying, "Growing up in a South Indian middle-class home, we were always told that politics is a dirty game. This belief is so ingrained in our psyche that it is almost impossible to change it." He then asked Modi what his advice was for people who thought the same way.

"If you believed in what you said, we would not be having this conversation," Modi said

He said politics needed continuous entry of good people who put mission over ambition, and summarised his ideology as "nation first". The PM further said he was willing to discard old ideas and embrace new ones as long as they fitted into his essential ideology of "nation first".

Asserting that he never confined himself to a comfort zone, Modi said his risk-taking ability had hardly been utilised. "My risk-taking ability is several times more," he said, adding that it was because he never bothered about himself.

Modi also cited a number of incidents including the Godhra incident and terror attacks in Gujarat to describe how he tried to detach himself from his emotions to overcome anxiety. "I am in a position in which I have to detach myself from emotions, and the natural tendencies human beings have... I have to rise above it," he said.