The question Prime Minister Modi could not ignore in Norway

The controversies sparked during Narendra Modi’s first-ever visit to Norway last week continue to stir debate.

It marked a historic trip by an Indian Prime Minister to Norway since Indira Gandhi’s visit in 1983.

There was palpable enthusiasm in welcoming the leader of the world’s largest democracy to Norway, one of Europe’s smallest yet most respected democracies. The Norwegian Prime Minister has highlighted the importance of India and Norway standing together to promote international cooperation and uphold a rules-based world order.

What was expected to be a rare historical moment, however, suddenly turned upside down when a young Norwegian journalist confronted the Indian Prime Minister at the end of a joint press briefing.

“Prime Minister Modi, why don’t you take some questions from the freest press in the world?”

Helle Lyng Svendsen, the Norwegian journalist who posed the question, later admitted that she had not expected Narendra Modi to answer it. She didn’t get any surprises, and Modi walked away.

To mitigate any possible negative impression, senior officials from India’s Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) later held a separate press conference. There too, they were met with pointed questions, including, “Why should we trust you?” and whether India could “promise to stop the human rights violations that are going on.”

Clearly offended, the MEA secretary gave a lengthy reply, highlighting India’s ancient civilisation, diversity, and contributions such as yoga, while dismissing the criticism as being based on reports “published by some God-forsaken, ignorant NGOs”.

Colonial hangover or democratic oversight?
Many Indian media portals and netizens were outraged by the blunt questions directed at the Prime Minister. They wondered why global leaders such as Xi Jinping did not face similar questions during visits to Europe.

The distasteful caricature of Modi, published in Aftenposten, one of Norway’s major newspapers, depicting him as a snake charmer, seemed to several Indians to confirm suspicions that the entire episode reflected lingering colonial prejudices.

Such a caricature brought back memories of the widely criticised cartoon published by The New York Times after India’s successful Mars mission, which depicted an Indian farmer with a cow knocking on the door of an “Elite Space Club,” despite India becoming the first country to reach Mars orbit on its maiden attempt.

These incidents made many wonder whether Europe still struggles to free itself from colonial-era attitudes and a worldview frozen in the last century.

Despite the far-reaching consequences of colonialism, a significant segment of Europeans remains insufficiently aware of the profound economic and cultural damage it inflicted on countries such as India.

Few can fathom the scale and figures, such as India’s share of global GDP, which is estimated to have fallen from roughly 25% before colonial rule to nearly 3% by the end of it. The authors themselves have often encountered otherwise well-read Westerners who appeared genuinely perplexed when confronted with such historical facts.

While it is true that many European nations with imperial histories have yet to outgrow their colonial mindsets toward emerging global powers like India, the Norwegian situation is very different. Norway had never been a major colonial power. Over generations, Norway developed a highly democratic and egalitarian political culture that shaped how the Norwegian public and media viewed their elected representatives.

Political culture in Norway
In Norway, the prime minister and other political dignitaries are generally not treated as members of a privileged elite. Prime ministers often fly on commercial flights alongside ordinary passengers, even on budget airlines. Some have even been spotted cycling through the streets of Oslo while holding the country’s highest office.

It is not unusual for sitting ministers or senior political leaders to be stopped by Norwegian police and fined for speeding violations.

It is no wonder, then, that politicians in Norway are often addressed casually, regardless of the offices they hold. It is also worth noting that public scrutiny remains relentless, even over seemingly minor issues.

Here is an incident that illustrates what Norwegians expect from their politicians.

In 2010, Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg, who later became NATO Secretary General, faced controversy after receiving an official gift during a visit to India.

Public debate erupted over whether the gift had been retained for personal use or properly handed over to the state. The controversy eventually contributed to stricter Norwegian rules stipulating that diplomatic gifts worth more than 2,000 Norwegian kroner (around 20,000 Indian rupees) could not be kept for personal use.

Such an egalitarian spirit is very much a part of the Norwegian press as well. The fact that Helle Lyng Svendsen, the journalist involved in the controversy, was a relatively junior journalist is perhaps the best illustration of this.

“I’m a small-town reporter from Norway. People talk about how I’m not a famous journalist. In Norway, any journalist can get accreditation to basically any government event. You can attend that and ask questions and if your question is meaningful or good enough that could suddenly be news across the country” told Ms Svendsen to a news portal.

For many Norwegians, the incident raised a simple question: Why should the top elected representative of the world’s largest democracy hesitate to answer direct questions about trust, bilateral relations, or press freedom? And why should criticism of India’s declining press freedom rankings, documented by various independent organisations, be treated as offensive rather than legitimate?

Indian diplomats clearly failed to appreciate this distinctive political culture and media ethos when they confronted the Norwegian press. They misunderstood a legitimate press scrutiny for an attempt to humiliate India out of prejudice.

Why does the question matter?
At its core, the Norwegian episode was about press freedom – one of democracy’s essential pillars. The question carried particular weight because India’s Prime Minister had not held any sustained, open-ended press interaction since assuming office more than a decade earlier.

A simple question from a junior journalist became a political flashpoint because it came from a country ranked among the world’s strongest democracies, with some of the highest standards of press freedom. It also came at a time when India’s democracy had been downgraded by global indices – from “free” to “partly free” by Freedom House, and from a “full democracy” to a “flawed democracy” in the Democracy Index.

Another major democracy that has experienced a substantial decline in press freedom and democratic rankings is the United States. Yet even there, US Presidents continue to engage with journalists regularly, however combative, dismissive, or performative those exchanges may at times be.

The Norwegian episode became significant to many Indians because it reminded them of an uncomfortable reality they were living in. A basic request for India’s Prime Minister to interact with the press – posed by an obscure journalist in a distant Scandinavian country– resonated so deeply across India because it was a question much of our own media had stopped asking long ago.
(Social anthropologist and novelist Thomas Sajan and US-trained neurologist Titto Idicula, based in Norway, write on politics, culture, economy, and medicine)