- The video discusses the recent conflict between Indian and Chinese armed forces in the Galwan River Valley, highlighting the absence of modern weaponry and the potential catastrophic consequences of a hot conflict between the two nuclear-armed nations.
- It then explores the background of Narendra Modi, the Prime Minister of India, tracing his humble beginnings, his involvement in the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), and his passion for Hindu culture.
- The video provides context on the partition of South Asia by the British, which led to religious tensions and violence, and how India eventually established itself as a secular, socialist, democratic republic.
- It delves into the Bangladesh Liberation War and Indira Gandhi's leadership during the crisis, as well as her subsequent declaration of a national state of emergency, which Modi actively opposed.
- The video highlights the end of the emergency and the subsequent loss of power by the Congress Party, paving the way for Modi's rise in politics.
- It discusses the challenges faced by the Janata Party, which Modi had joined, and its eventual collapse, leading to the formation of a secular revival and a loss of parliamentary majority.
- The summary concludes by mentioning the 1980 general election, which resulted in a significant reduction in seats for the Janata Party.

- The Janata Party was punished in the 1980 general election due to the state of the economy and split within the party.
- The Indian People's Party (BJP) was created as a result, with Narendra Modi as one of its first members.
- Indira Gandhi, the prime minister, was assassinated in 1984, leading to sectarian violence and riots.
- The BJP gained popularity through campaigns to construct a Hindu temple and the destruction of the Babri Mosque.
- The BJP taught Hindus to resent the existing political system and gained a majority in the Gujarat state election.
- Narendra Modi was appointed chief minister of Gujarat in 2001, leading to violence and accusations of government involvement.
- Modi's involvement in the riots remains debated, but he was cleared legally and his career continued to flourish.

- Narendra Modi's strategy of combining Hindu nationalism and pro-business economics proved successful in the 2002 Gujarat election campaign.
- Despite controversy surrounding the Gujarat riots and criticism from Western nations, Modi knew he had found a winning strategy.
- Modi rebranded himself as an economic reformer during his second term as chief minister of Gujarat, focusing on infrastructure, reducing corruption, and improving governance.
- He utilized holographic technology, social media, and marketing tactics to build his personal appeal and create a narrative of a dynamic leader.
- In 2014, Modi became the 14th Prime Minister of India, implementing policies that promoted Hindu nationalism and neoliberal economics.
- He faced criticism for demonetization and the implementation of the goods and services tax, but still enjoyed political success.
- Modi's focus on national security led to tensions with Pakistan, including a cross-border airstrike and military clashes.
- Despite controversies and challenges, Modi's combination of Hindu nationalism and pro-business economics propelled him to become one of the most influential figures in India.

- The 2019 general election in India was dominated by nationalist rhetoric, with Narendra Modi portraying himself as the protector of India and Hindus.
- Modi's government implemented majoritarian policies, including banning triple talaq and repealing the special autonomous status of Jammu and Kashmir.
- The Citizenship Amendment Act excluded Muslims, leading to religious violence and attacks on journalists.
- Modi laid the foundation stone for a Hindu temple in Ayodhya, signaling India as a Hindu majoritarian country.
- Modi's foreign policy is focused on countering China's rise in the Indo-Pacific region, leading to closer ties with the US and the Quad alliance.
- India's economic growth and potential as a supply chain alternative to China have strengthened its ties with the West.
- Modi's leadership has made India more assertive internationally, economically dynamic, and more Hindu in culture and politics.

- The video discusses the recent conflict between Indian and Chinese armed forces in the Galwan River Valley, highlighting the absence of modern weaponry and the potential catastrophic consequences of a hot conflict between the two nuclear-armed nations.
- It then explores the background of Narendra Modi, the Prime Minister of India, tracing his humble beginnings, his involvement in the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), and his passion for Hindu culture.
- The video provides context on the partition of South Asia by the British, which led to religious tensions and violence, and how India eventually established itself as a secular, socialist, democratic republic.
- It delves into the Bangladesh Liberation War and Indira Gandhi's leadership during the crisis, as well as her subsequent declaration of a national state of emergency, which Modi actively opposed.
- The video highlights the end of the emergency and the subsequent loss of power by the Congress Party, paving the way for Modi's rise in politics.
- It discusses the challenges faced by the Janata Party, which Modi had joined, and its eventual collapse, leading to the formation of a secular revival and a loss of parliamentary majority.
- The summary concludes by mentioning the 1980 general election, which resulted in a significant reduction in seats for the Janata Party.
- The Janata Party was punished in the 1980 general election due to the state of the economy and split within the party.
- The Indian People's Party (BJP) was created as a result, with Narendra Modi as one of its first members.
- Indira Gandhi, the prime minister, was assassinated in 1984, leading to sectarian violence and riots.
- The BJP gained popularity through campaigns to construct a Hindu temple and the destruction of the Babri Mosque.
- The BJP taught Hindus to resent the existing political system and gained a majority in the Gujarat state election.
- Narendra Modi was appointed chief minister of Gujarat in 2001, leading to violence and accusations of government involvement.
- Modi's involvement in the riots remains debated, but he was cleared legally and his career continued to flourish.
- Narendra Modi's strategy of combining Hindu nationalism and pro-business economics proved successful in the 2002 Gujarat election campaign.
- Despite controversy surrounding the Gujarat riots and criticism from Western nations, Modi knew he had found a winning strategy.
- Modi rebranded himself as an economic reformer during his second term as chief minister of Gujarat, focusing on infrastructure, reducing corruption, and improving governance.
- He utilized holographic technology, social media, and marketing tactics to build his personal appeal and create a narrative of a dynamic leader.
- In 2014, Modi became the 14th Prime Minister of India, implementing policies that promoted Hindu nationalism and neoliberal economics.
- He faced criticism for demonetization and the implementation of the goods and services tax, but still enjoyed political success.
- Modi's focus on national security led to tensions with Pakistan, including a cross-border airstrike and military clashes.
- Despite controversies and challenges, Modi's combination of Hindu nationalism and pro-business economics propelled him to become one of the most influential figures in India.
- The 2019 general election in India was dominated by nationalist rhetoric, with Narendra Modi portraying himself as the protector of India and Hindus.
- Modi's government implemented majoritarian policies, including banning triple talaq and repealing the special autonomous status of Jammu and Kashmir.
- The Citizenship Amendment Act excluded Muslims, leading to religious violence and attacks on journalists.
- Modi laid the foundation stone for a Hindu temple in Ayodhya, signaling India as a Hindu majoritarian country.
- Modi's foreign policy is focused on countering China's rise in the Indo-Pacific region, leading to closer ties with the US and the Quad alliance.
- India's economic growth and potential as a supply chain alternative to China have strengthened its ties with the West.
- Modi's leadership has made India more assertive internationally, economically dynamic, and more Hindu in culture and politics.

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ABOUT JOHN COOGAN:
I am the co-founder of http://soylent.com and http://lucy.co, both of which were funded by Y Combinator (Summer 2012 and Winter 2018).

I've been an entrepreneur for the last decade across multiple companies. I've done a lot of work in Silicon Valley, so that's mostly what I talk about. I've raised over 10 rounds of venture capital totaling over $100m in funding.

I work mostly in tech-enabled consumer packaged goods, meaning I use software to make the best products possible

CONTACT:
You can get in touch with me via Twitter: https://twitter.com/johncoogan

Disclaimer: This video is purely my opinion and should not be regarded as a primary source. I am not a financial advisor and this is not a recommendation to buy or sell securities. Always do your own due diligence.

Indian armed forces, under orders from Narendra Modi, are about to do battle with the Chinese People's Liberation Army.

The disputed border region of the Galwan River Valley.

And this isn't the first time conflict has flared up here.

But there's something strange about this battle.

Well, the Galwan River Valley sits on a disputed border between India and China, both nuclear-armed nations.

This flashpoint, and the nation's reluctance to use guns and explosives shows us how much is at stake.

If the conflict ever went hot, the fallout would be catastrophic.

With 25% of the world's population living in India and China, the relationship between the 2 nations may come to be a defining theme of the 21st century.

I've already gone down the rabbit hole of Xi Jinping, but now I want to look at the other half of the equation.

And how did he come to govern more people than any other leader on earth?

Narendra Modi was born into humble beginnings, just after India gained independence from British colonialism.

Born in Gujarat, his father sold tea, and his home didn't even have windows.

Around 8 years old, he began taking a keen interest in a local organization called the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh.

His experience in the RSS is fundamental to understanding who Modi would become.

The RSS was an organization founded on the principles of an Indian nationalist ideology called Hindutva.

According to Hindutva, in order to be truly Indian, you have to be Hindu.

By the time Modi joined, the RSS was already infamous across India.

The famous leader, Mahatma Gandhi, was assassinated by an RSS member, who had taken issue with his attempts to reconcile differences between Indian Muslims and Hindus.

This didn't prevent Modi from joining, and the man who enrolled him was named Lakshman Rao Inamdar.

Remember Inamdar, because he will be a key character in Modi's rise to power.

By 1967, Modi had grown into a young man, graduated high school, and was ready to climb the ranks of the RSS.

Modi's parents had arranged for him to be married to a local girl.

This was a problem because the RSS prohibited their members from marrying, and doing so would mean that he'd be expelled from the organization.

Risking being shunned by his family and community, Modi abandoned his bride-to-be and left Gujarat.

After years of soul-searching at various holy sites, Modi would eventually return home, visiting the RSS headquarters and reconnecting with his early mentor, Inamdar.

He was full of energy and idealism, but most importantly, he was passionate about Hindu culture.

With this in mind, he pushed Modi to take up politics, joining the Bharatiya Janasang, the RSS's political party.

So by this point, a young and poor Modi had grown into a politically determined young man and found his calling through a Namdar in the RSS.

But we need to add some context to what was going on in India at the time.

During the collapse of colonialism, the British made a catastrophic miscalculation.

South Asia was made up of 3 main religious groups, Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs.

When the British left, they made the decision to partition the region across these religious lines.

However, this created pockets of minorities in each region, totaling nearly 15 million people.

Fearing sectarian violence, most chose to flee their homes and migrate across the newly made borders.

The ensuing chaos led to the deaths of over 2 million people, and the effects reverberated throughout history, still causing tensions today.

This event would be fundamental to how India would eventually codify its constitution, declaring India a sovereign, socialist, secular, democratic republic.

This secularism was important because today, even After the partition, about 1 billion Indians are Hindu, 170 million are Muslim, and the remaining are either Sikh or Christian.

Early leaders like Gandhi knew that for India to thrive, there would need to be peace between these groups.

But this wasn't guaranteed, and the tensions would soon spill over into violence.

At the time, the Muslim and Hindu regions of Bengal had been divided up between Pakistan and India.

But in 1970, rising Bengali nationalism resulted in a pro-Bengali party winning enough seats to form a government and push for independence.

Pakistan refused to acknowledge the election results and in response launched a crackdown named Operation Searchlight.

It was a brutal campaign that many have labeled a genocide.

The following day, Bengali leaders declared their independence.

So by this point, India was being led by Indira Gandhi, and she had found herself facing a humanitarian crisis.

Millions of Bengalis fled the fighting and sought refuge in India.

Struggling with the influx of migrants, Indira Gandhi took action and declared war on Pakistan in December of 1971.

This was the nationalist cause Narendra Modi had been looking for.

But he would never get the chance to take up arms for his people.

2 weeks later, Pakistan was defeated and Bangladesh was born.

But Modi was about to find another cause to fight for.

India's leader, Indira Gandhi, was about to plunge the country into an unprecedented crisis.

The emergency is a pivotal moment in Indian history and granted Indira Gandhi unprecedented power.

At this point, I should clarify that Indira Gandhi wasn't related to Mahatma Gandhi, it's just a common name.

In fact, Indira was the daughter of India's former leader, Jawaharlal Nehru, whom many call the architect of modern India.

During the Cold War, Nehru had been an advocate of Indian neutrality, not wanting to be sucked into a war between the great powers of the USSR and the USA.

But when the USA announced they would sell weapons to Pakistan, India's historic enemy, India began leaning toward the Soviet Union.

Nehru visited Moscow in 1955, resulting in Nikita Khrushchev agreeing to provide military aid to India.

With the 2 countries becoming more economically aligned, it wasn't long until Soviet doctrine began creeping into Indian politics.

Nehru lavished state resources on heavy industries like steel, coal mining, and power generation.

In a speech outlining India's second five-year plan, Nehru said, We must start with the production of the machine which makes the machine.

After his death, his daughter Indira picked up where her father left off.

After becoming prime minister, she nationalized India's coal, steel, and refining industries.

She took control of the country's 14 largest banks, and in 1971, signed a treaty with the USSR promoting cooperation on a wide range of topics.

This was the largest centralization of power in India's history and led some to refer to Indira Gandhi as the Empress of India.

But discontent was never far from the surface.

The reforms led to rapidly rising food prices and caused huge strikes in Narendra Modi's home state of Gujarat.

Similar protests broke out in the eastern Indian state of Bihar.

A massive railway strike brought the country to a standstill.

And yet those issues paled in significance to what would come next.

On June 12th, 1975, Gandhi was found guilty of electoral malpractice.

The court ordered that she be stripped of her parliamentary seat.

And under India's system of government, you had to be a member of parliament in order to be a prime minister.

The Times of India compared the verdict to firing the prime minister for a traffic ticket.

She declared a national state of emergency, citing imminent threats to the Indian state.

The emergency was 1 of the most controversial periods of India's modern history.

Many of Gandhi's political opponents were thrown in jail.

The government even exploited the suspension of democracy by embarking on a forced sterilization program to control rising population levels.

In addition to being highly controversial, the emergency was also the making of Narendra Modi.

Despite being part of the now-banned RSS, Modi had been a prominent activist during the emergency, gaining reputation for action and receiving publicity in national publications.

Despite the RSS being pushed underground, Modi was still politically active, joining Gandhi's opposition, the Janata Party.

Finally, after 21 months, Indira Gandhi ended the emergency and called fresh elections.

Her tight grip of the media and large industry made Indira confident she would win.

For the first time ever, Congress lost power in India.

They were crushed by the opposition Janata Party, a marriage of convenience between several opposition parties, including 1 that Modi had joined years earlier.

Maraji Desai became the first non-Congress Prime Minister of India.

Congress had dominated Indian politics since before independence.

Mahatma Gandhi and Nehru gave it an aura that made it seem unbeatable.

But the party's arrogance and complacency opened the door.

After the ban on the RSS was overturned, he went to India's capital, Delhi.

There he wrote the RSS's official history of the emergency years.

And at the same time, he was building a reputation for himself.

Soon, fate would provide him with an even bigger opportunity.

The Janata Party, which won the 1977 election, soon faced the problem that confronts every protest party created in a crisis.

What happens when you solve the problem you were created to solve?

The Janata Party was an unwieldy alliance.

It brought together Hindu nationalists, farmers' rights advocates, socialists, and even a renegade faction of the Congress Party.

Those contradictions, as well as the pressures of leadership, led to its collapse.

1 of the main problems was that the national leadership of the Hindu nationalists were much more moderate than the grassroots.

The national leadership wanted to run the country and win another election, while the grassroots were strongly connected to the RSS.

Some members were even accused of involvement in sectarian riots that took place in 1978 and 1979.

That frustrated modernizers within the National Party, as well as their coalition partners.

Eventually, a fragment of the party broke off to form a secular revival.

This meant the government lost its parliamentary majority.

They punished the Janata Party in the 1980 general election, reducing it to just 31 out of 531 seats.

Part of the problem was the state of the economy.

Thanks in part to the economic planning of the National Congress, by 1981, India was reliant on loans from the International Monetary Fund.

Following the elections, the executive council of the Janata party, concerned that voters perceived it as too extreme, decreed that its members couldn't also be members of the RSS.

That only worsened the split between the leadership and the grassroots.

So in April of 1980, the members created a new political party with close ties to the RSS.

They called it the Indian People's Party, but it goes by BJP, and Narendra Modi was 1 of its first members.

Although by then Indira Gandhi was again prime minister, hopes were high for the BJP, but no 1 was counting on what happened next.

Indira Gandhi, ruler of the world's largest democracy, died today, shot down by 2 of her own bodyguards.

They were Sikhs taking revenge for the invasion of their temple in June.

And tonight, mobs of Hindus have been attacking Sikhs in cities throughout the subcontinent.

The assassination of Indira Gandhi stemmed from Operation Blue Star, an Indian military plan to remove a charismatic Sikh militant from 1 of the holiest sites in Sikhism.

Official numbers put the death toll at more than 550 Sikh militants and civilians, and 83 soldiers.

Distraught and enraged, Gandhi's bodyguards shot her as an act of revenge.

36 years later, in the same city, sectarian violence had claimed the life of another Indian leader named Gandhi.

In the aftermath of the assassination, an estimated 8,000 Sikhs were killed in riots and targeted attacks.

Mahatma Gandhi and his protege Nehru knew that sectarian violence was 1 of the biggest challenges India would face following independence.

Mutual hatred of the British helped keep a lid on violence during the colonial era, but independence and the chaos of partition threatened to unleash a tidal wave.

Gandhi's assassination meant a new election was required.

Despite being 1 of the party's co-founders, his own moderate social politics resembled Mahatma Gandhi's socialism.

But in an election where voters were sympathetic to the Congress Party, he simply didn't give people a strong enough reason to vote for him.

The BJP won 2 seats in India's parliament.

The failure of his moderate strategy caused the party to search for a different way forward.

An opportunity presented itself right away.

The VHP, a member of the group of nationalist organizations led by the RSS, began a campaign to construct a Hindu temple dedicated to the deity Rama in a popular city.

They believed that the site was Rama's birthplace.

The BHP went all in on the campaign to demolish the Babri Mosque.

That made the Congress Party very nervous.

Rajiv Gandhi, who took over as prime minister after his mother Indira's assassination, wanted to neutralize the issue by promising to permit Hindu prayer at the Babri Mosque.

After that angered Muslims, he appeased them by banning the import of Salman Rushdie's book, The Satanic Verses.

Then when that didn't work, he endorsed the construction of a Hindu temple in the city.

While all this was going on, the RSS sent its rising star, Narendra Modi, to Gujarat.

His job was to whip the party into shape and organize its campaigns in municipal elections in the city of Ahmedabad.

The campaign was a huge success, and today, official biographies credit Modi as the mastermind behind the scenes.

As a reward, in 1987, he was promoted to organizing secretary of the BJP's Gujarat branch.

His job was to increase the prominence and popularity of the BJP, and by extension, the RSS.

It wouldn't take very long for both of those things to happen.

But it didn't have all that much to do with Modi.

The VHP's ability to mobilize public opinion was tested in the city of Ayodhya in 1992, when a mob of their supporters stormed the Babri Mosque.

The aim was to destroy this symbol of Islam.

The battle that followed claimed 1,200 lives and sparked a frenzy of violence across India.

In late 1990, the BJP's leader made a pilgrimage to the city.

When Hindu protesters showed up in December, police opened fire, killing dozens and further inflaming tensions.

When protesters returned in 1992, they overwhelmed security and attacked the mosque with pickaxes.

Hours later, it was nothing but dust and rubble.

To this day, it's not clear if the destruction of the Babri Mosque was a spontaneous act or the culmination of a carefully orchestrated plan.

But what is clear is that several leading Hindu nationalist figures provoked it.

You might have thought that Because of India's high levels of religious and ethnic diversity, and the pride its leaders took in cultivating religious toleration, that the destruction of the Brabhari Mosque would have been bad news for the BJP.

In 1995, the party won a massive majority in the Gujarat state election.

In the space of just 10 years, the Gujarat state parliament went from being dominated by the sky blue of the Congress party to being bathed in the saffron orange of the BJP.

The best way to describe what the BJP was doing was that it was teaching Hindus to resent the existing political system, which had been specifically crafted by the Congress Party to avoid 1 group dominating any other.

Moreover, they represented India itself, so why shouldn't they receive special treatment?

Given the country's long history with religiously motivated violence, this was dangerous thinking.

The riots that culminated in the destruction of the Babri Mosque were a symbol of a country whose politics were changing rapidly, and Narendra Modi was on the ground driving that change.

The following year, the BJP became the largest party in the national parliament.

But before he could turn his attention to New Delhi, Modi was still needed at home.

The BJP were running Gujarat, but they hadn't actually chosen a leader.

1 of them, Shankar Singh Vigela, was an experienced legislator.

The other, Keshubhai Patel, had joined the RSS before India gained independence.

The BJP's leadership, including Modi, threw their support behind Patel.

In fact, he rebelled and threatened to leave the party.

Terrified of losing the political advantage they'd worked so hard to create, the BJP backtracked and installed Vigela as chief minister of Gujarat.

Modi, punished for backing the wrong horse, was temporarily banished from his home state.

That still wasn't enough for Vigela, though.

He still left the BJP in order to form his own splinter group, bringing down the government in the process.

Eventually, after fresh elections in February of 1998, the BJP emerged with a clear majority.

Patel was installed as chief minister of Gujarat.

Meanwhile, that same month, national elections produced an inconclusive result.

Congress and the BJP couldn't be separated.

After some wrangling, the BJP formed a coalition, and Vajpayee was named prime minister.

And just like that, Gujarat and India were both led by the BJP.

In May of 1998, Modi was promoted to general secretary, but it wouldn't be long until he was called to a higher post.

By 2001, Patel's health was failing, and frankly, so was his government.

The BJP's national leadership decided Gujarat needed a new chief minister.

Modi didn't have any political experience, but he was an effective organizer and deeply committed to the goals of the BJP.

On October 3rd, he was appointed chief minister and given the task of leading the BJP to victory in the following year's election.

Barely 2 weeks After his 50th birthday, Narendra Modi suddenly found himself leading a state of more than 50 million people.

After years of effort, he had accomplished something amazing.

But his career as a politician was almost over as suddenly as it began.

Murder, Rape, houses torched, people burnt alive.

Over 1,000 people have died and more than 100,000 have become refugees in their own land.

The violence which spread all across Gujarat began in late February, after this train carrying Hindu pilgrims was attacked by Muslims.

1 carriage was torched, and 58 people died, mostly women and children.

Hindu mobs responded with murder and arson.

India has never been a stranger to violence.

For centuries, zealots killed in the name of their religion.

But this time felt different, because this time it felt like the government was on the side of the perpetrators.

The police and authorities in Gujarat were accused of standing back and allowing the violence to unfold, or even encouraging it.

Human Rights Watch said that the Gujarat state administration had been engaged in a massive cover-up of the state's role in the massacres.

4 days after the violence broke out, Narendra Modi and India's Home Minister LK Advani visited the scene to call for peace.

But they were both members of the BJP, a party which based its entire identity on Hindu supremacism.

See all John Coogan transcripts on Youtube

History of Narendra Modi