The recent drama created by Helle Lyng Svendsen during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Norway says more about the growing desperation of sections of the Western commentary ecosystem than about Bharat itself.
As PM Modi concluded a formal joint statement with Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store and walked away from the podium, a voice from the audience suddenly shouted: “Prime Minister Modi, why don’t you take some questions from the freest in the world?”
The clip was quickly circulated online. Predictably, it was amplified by anti-Modi activists, sections of Western media, and India’s usual political ecosystem eager to portray Bharat as intolerant and authoritarian. But the episode itself was hardly an example of serious journalism.
This was not a press conference. It was a structured diplomatic joint statement. By the time the question was shouted, PM Modi had already turned away and was exiting the venue. There was no realistic expectation of an answer. The purpose was visual theatre, social media virality, and narrative creation.
The timing was equally revealing. PM Modi’s multi-nation visit to Europe and the UAE had largely gone well diplomatically and strategically. Naturally, some attempt had to be made to shift the conversation away from outcomes and back toward the familiar themes of “democracy” and “press freedom.”
The larger issue, however, is not one Norwegian commentator. It is the increasingly questionable credibility of the global ecosystem that lectures Bharat on democracy while applying completely inconsistent standards elsewhere.
Consider the so-called press freedom rankings. These rankings routinely place Bharat far below countries facing political instability, censorship concerns, military influence, or institutional breakdown. The logic often appears detached from reality.
Ukraine ranks significantly higher despite operating under wartime information controls. The United States, celebrated as a model democracy, witnessed years of media reluctance to aggressively pursue uncomfortable questions surrounding elite scandals like the Epstein files. Countries struggling with deep instability and state pressure often continue receiving better rankings than Bharat. And yet Bharat is pushed down to 157. This, despite being home to the world’s largest electoral exercise. This despite opposition parties governing several states while another party rules at the Centre. This despite thousands of television debates, newspapers, digital platforms, YouTube channels, and social media users criticising the Prime Minister, the judiciary, the military, and national institutions daily.
India’s media ecosystem is not silent. It is arguably among the loudest and most chaotic in the world. One may criticise sensationalism. One may debate journalistic standards. One may question political bias. But to suggest Bharat lacks media freedom requires ignoring visible reality.
The problem increasingly appears ideological rather than empirical. For many Western institutions, “free media” often seems to mean media that align with a particular ideological worldview. Anything outside that framework is quickly labelled nationalist, authoritarian, or problematic. This is where the hypocrisy becomes impossible to ignore.
European commentators routinely question Bharat’s democratic credentials while rarely confronting their own historical baggage with the same intensity. Take the Netherlands and the broader Dutch colonial legacy.
Has the Dutch establishment fully acknowledged the scale of exploitation carried out under the Dutch East India Company across Asia, including Bharat? The global discussion on slavery focuses overwhelmingly on the Atlantic world. Far less attention is given to the Indian Ocean slave trade run by European colonial powers.
During the 17th and 18th centuries, the VOC operated a vast slave trading network across Asia. One of its principal centres was Pulicat on the Coromandel Coast, anchored by Fort Geldria. Historical research suggests that tens of thousands of Indians were forcibly transported to Batavia and other Dutch-controlled territories between 1621 and 1665 alone. Men, women, and children displaced by famine, war, regional collapse, and colonial opportunism were reduced to tradable cargo.
Many were Bengalis captured after Arakanese raids. Others came from regions destabilised after the collapse of the Vijayanagar Empire. Victims of famine were commodified and shipped across Dutch colonial networks.
In Dutch-controlled Cochin on the Malabar Coast, enslaved populations were transported to Ceylon, Batavia, and the Cape colonies under brutal conditions marked by starvation, disease, and high mortality. Yet these chapters rarely dominate Europe’s modern moral discourse. The issue here is not that Bharat is beyond criticism. No democracy is perfect. The issue is selective outrage.
When countries with histories of colonial exploitation and continuing geopolitical double standards attempt to lecture Bharat while ignoring their own contradictions, the moral authority of such criticism naturally weakens. The same pattern is visible in the debate around PM Modi supposedly “avoiding questions.” The assumption that democracy can only function through Western-style open press conferences is itself deeply Eurocentric.
PM Modi communicates extensively through speeches, interviews, Parliament, elections, public outreach, and digital platforms. More importantly, he continues receiving repeated electoral mandates from the people of Bharat.
Ultimately, democratic legitimacy comes from citizens, not from the approval of elite Western commentary circles. What truly unsettles sections of the global establishment today is not merely Bharat’s political rise. It is Bharat’s intellectual decolonisation.
For decades, the West assumed the right to define democracy, secularism, freedom, and legitimacy for the rest of the world. That monopoly is weakening. Modern Bharat is increasingly asserting its right to define itself through its own civilisational experiences and democratic realities rather than borrowed European frameworks. And perhaps that is the real discomfort behind these recurring lectures on “press freedom.”
