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New Delhi: During Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s official visit to the Netherlands, a major controversy erupted during a press briefing in The Hague. While the official diplomatic objective of the visit was to elevate bilateral ties to a “strategic partnership” – heavily driven by trade, defence, and semiconductor technology – the exchange between Dutch journalists and Indian diplomat underscored deep friction between Western journalistic standards and the Modi government’s tightly controlled public relations process.

As The Wire’s Devirupa Mitra has reported, ahead of the dinner for Modi hosted at Catshuis, the official residence of the Dutch PM just outside The Hague, PM Rob Jetten spoke with local reporters. Jetten was asked about aspects of Dutch-India relations.

Jetten told reporters just before Modi arrived that there were concerns among the Netherlands and other EU member states about “developments in India” under Modi’s BJP.

The issue was then forced directly onto the record by Ashwant Nandram, a journalist from the prominent Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant, who asked the following question to the Indian delegation during the official media briefing:

“I’m a journalist for the Dutch newspaper, De Volkskrant. I have a few questions. In the Netherlands, there is a tradition that after such a visit, both Prime Ministers are available for questions. I wonder what the reason is that that is not the case today.

Another thing is that today during a statement of Prime Minister Jetten, he said that the Netherlands and the European Union are worried about, he said, press freedom and minority rights, among them the Muslim........

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