है नहीं ये अच्छी, नॉर्वेजियन लड़की – Norway Helle Lyng Question PM Modi Joint Press Briefing India Press Freedom row ntc dpmx
Norway is not only famous for its beautiful snowy beaches and fish, but it also has an annual habit – telling the whole world that you’re doing it all wrong! This is called ‘World Press Freedom Index’ (ranking of press freedom in the world). India’s condition is very bad in this list. It is somewhere between Palestine and Venezuela on this list. Of which one country is a slave and the other half is a slave. India’s neighbors Pakistan and Bangladesh are like us in this. Like South Asians all look the same. This also includes Türkiye, where President Erdogan happily sends journalists to jail. India is at number 157 in this list and Norway is at number one as always! Because there is a lot of freedom in Norway – the most in the world, perhaps more than enough!
by the way you norway We cannot expect much warmth for India from him, because that country itself is bone-chillingly cold. Well, now enters the story of the outspoken and blonde Haley Lane. Miss Lane writes for a newspaper or website that most Norwegians themselves never read. She is writing about a country where Norwegians will never come to visit. And he did all this in a joint meeting which was not actually a question-and-answer press conference at all.
It is important to understand this difference. Such joint meeting of two big leaders happens only for photo op. A theater of diplomacy, not an arena for sharp journalism. Every journalist in the world knows this. Except maybe Haley Lane, who thought Narendra Modi But this is the best opportunity to shout about press freedom. Modi did not answer and went out of the room. When someone shouts like this while you are getting your photo taken, the best thing to do is to walk away.
But Haley did not stop there. He followed them to the lift. Then he went home and tweeted about it. He wrote, “Narendra Modi did not listen to my question. Norway is at number one in press freedom, while India is competing with Palestine, UAE and Cuba at 157th position. Our job is to question the powers with whom we are cooperating.”
Haley’s words testify to interesting thinking. That Norway joining hands with India is a moral mistake and it is necessary for a journalist like Haley to intervene. Whereas the truth is that at the same time the Norwegian government was signing many business deals with India. The government of Norway itself had invited PM Modi, the king there shook hands with him. And after adopting the entire democratic process, it was accepted that India is a good country to do business. But Helly had questions in her mind – ‘Helle Yeah’!
After this, the Indian Embassy, with great overconfidence and gross ignorance, invited Haley to a real press conference. He said, Dear Miss Lane, come yourself and ask your questions. He tagged him on Twitter (now called X). This step was fine to show bravery, but later I felt that it was not wise. She came. She directly asked “why should we trust India” and then walked out, then came back. On this, Sibi George, Secretary of the Ministry of External Affairs, took charge on behalf of the Indian Embassy. In the speech he gave, he covered everything – the old civilization of India, the game of chess, yoga and some such things which we can call ‘Ancient Gauravasana’ in Sanskrit. He mentioned India’s help (vaccine diplomacy) during Corona, praised the 200 TV channels of Delhi and said that people who speak ill of India read the reports of ‘headless NGOs’. He also said that women in India had got the right to vote in 1947 itself, much earlier than many countries whose names are too many to mention.
But what Sibi George did not say, and what did not occur to anyone else in that entire room, was that – Brother, why are you asking us? Ask your own government. Ask the Foreign Ministry of Norway why they invited Modi. Ask your Prime Minister that if India was not trustworthy, then why was he standing on the stage with him. Ask your king why he welcomed a leader whose country is at number 157 in your list. Ask your Parliament whether they had any debate on these deals before passing them.
The Indian Embassy itself invited an impatient journalist and then in response to sharp questions, gave a long lecture on the Saraswati River Civilization. This is not called diplomacy. This happens when the Ministry of External Affairs mistakes a press conference for a school project on ancient India.
On the other hand, on social media (X), as per their choice, Indian people were either praising Haley with ‘Oye Haley Mary’, or were calling her a foreign agent and a pawn of George Soros. Just a few days before the Modi incident, his account had got a blue tick. His last tweet before Monday was about drug addiction among Norwegian youth in April 2024. Before that she was active in 2022 and was completely quiet the rest of the time. People took this silence as evidence of conspiracy.
That blue tick also came under suspicion and the article on drugs became his background. Haley clarified that she was more active on TikTok and Instagram. She had taken the blue tick only because there was a spelling mistake in one of her tweets and she wanted to correct it, for which she had to pay money. To be honest, there couldn’t be a more artificial reason for getting a blue tick than this, but the internet was in no mood to understand anything straight at this time. That never happens. The result was that before Monday he had only 800 followers, and now he has 17,000. In order to expose him, the Indian Internet turned him into a star.
This is an old pattern from which we have not learned anything yet. Seeing the opportunity, Rahul Gandhi also shared his post. He asked, “What happens to India’s image when the world sees that the PM got nervous and ran away from some questions?” There would have been some substance in his statement if the opposition leaders would have been able to explain that in which democracy of the world the Prime Minister is forced to answer such shouted questions in a joint meeting with a foreign leader. The answer is – not in any. The real problem here is not that PM Modi did not respond to a journalist whom he probably did not hear amid the noise of photographing. The real problem is that instead of giving a strong and short answer on a trivial issue, the Indian diplomatic machinery gave such a long speech on history and civilization that it appeared both weak and blabberish at the same time.
Haley Lane follows the Prime Minister to an elevator, gaining 16,000 new followers and raising an issue in the Parliament of India. Sibi George defended the honor of the country in the name of chess and yoga. Norway remains at number one in press freedom and India remains at number 157. It would have been easy to end the matter here, but doing so would be dishonest to the truth. Because one truth about the Prime Minister who does not answer questions in a joint meeting is that he does not answer questions anywhere. Neither in the country, nor abroad. Not in a press conference because no such conference has taken place till date. Not in the briefing because that is the job of the spokespersons. Narendra Modi is the Prime Minister of India since 2014, he is the leader of 1.4 billion people, but till date he has never stood in front of the media in any room and said: Ask me whatever you want (AMA- ask me anything).
So when Sibi George said that there are 200 TV channels in Delhi alone, he was not wrong. TV channels in India are as saturated as the snowy shores of Norway. The only thing that these channels do not have is a Prime Minister who is ready to sit in front of a journalist and face questions directly without any script or preparation. There are channels, just questions are not asked. This is a strange definition of press freedom, but it is what we have been living with for the last 11 years.
The number 157 that Haley said was not a made-up number, she was just citing a figure – even if the list itself was prepared in a very mysterious way. But that number is true and the silence behind it is also true.
Where she was wrong was her method. Such a joint meeting is not the right place for this. Following a country’s leader to the elevator is not journalism, it is just creating ‘content’ for the internet, which gets a lot of views on X.
And meanwhile, a song that had been sleeping in some old corner of the mind for about thirty years woke up.
‘When I woke up, I woke up. The bird ran away.’ That means when I woke up, I was alone. The bird had flown away.
That bird was not some lifeless Norwegian ‘wood’ from which you could at least make furniture, she was a Norwegian ‘girl’.
‘Then I lit the fire.’ That means then I lit the fire.
But the truth is that no one lit any useful fire. The embassy did the opposite by calling him. Sibi George further fanned the fire by taking the name of NGO on international TV. The Indian Internet raised further flames by making an unknown Norwegian commentator the face of press freedom. Rahul Gandhi shook his hands on that. And the Prime Minister, whose silence had started all this, said nothing. As he has always said nothing, and in all probability will not say anything further.
Isn’t this a nice Norwegian girl? So is it all good?
No(r)way- No way! And this was also not good – neither Haley’s drama during photo ops, nor our long speech on civility, nor the internet trolling. Neither that elevator incident, nor 11 years of unasked questions in a democracy that is very proud of its Constitution, women’s voting rights and its 200 TV channels, which have to rely only on sources to know the Prime Minister’s ‘Mann Ki Baat’.
That lift, during this entire incident, was not available to say anything. Nor was the Prime Minister available.
(Originally published on India Today website Article translation of)
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