‘Saw painful scenes, controlled my emotions,’ – PM Modi recalling Godhra 2002 during podcast with Nikhil Kamath

Prime Minister Narendra Modi appeared in his first podcast with Zerodha co-founder Nikhil Kamath on Friday. In over two-hour-long podcast, the PM spoke at length about his childhood, friends, risk-taking ability, vision for youth and a host of other topics

Modi recounted the Godhra train burning incident of February 22, when he was a newly-elected member of legislative assembly (MLA).

"I became MLA for first time on February, 24 2002. Just three days later, train was burnt in Godhra. I decided to hit ground zero. Officers denied citing unavailability of the helicopter. They arranged one but said that they it wasn't for VIPs. It had a single engine. I said, I'm not a VIP, I'm a common man," Modi said.

Godhra Train Burning

The Godhra train burning occurred on the morning of February 27, 2002, when 59 Hindu pilgrims and karsevaks returning from Ayodhya were killed in a fire inside the Sabarmati Express near the Godhra railway station in Gujarat. The cause of the fire remains disputed. The Gujarat riots, during which Muslims were the targets of widespread and severe violence, took place shortly afterward.

"I took a single-engine chopper of ONGC despite the risk and reached Godhra. I saw those painful scenes, I controlled my emotions since I was the CM," Modi told Kamath in response to a question on ways to handle anxiety.

PM Modi also spoke about the importance of idealism over ideology, saying that even though politics can't happen without ideology. He said that Mahatma Gandhi and Veer Savarkar had different paths, but their ideology was 'freedom'.

Nation First

The Prime Minister said that it was always to keep the nation first.

“I am not the kind of person who changes his stance as per his convenience. I have grown up believing in only one (kind of) ideology," Modi said.

"If I were to describe my ideology in a few words, I would say, ‘Nation first’. Anything that fits into the tagline, ‘nation first’, doesn't bind me in the shackles of ideology and tradition. It pushed us to move forward. I am ready to leave old things and embrace new ones. However, the condition is always, ‘nation first’,” he said.