Amid a massive row during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Norway over alleged dangers to press freedom in India, a cartoon depicting the leader as a snake charmer, which appeared in Norway’s leading newspaper, has surfaced on social media and sparked allegations of racist stereotyping.
The cartoon was published with a commentary piece by the newspaper Aftenposten just a couple of hours before PM Modi landed in Oslo.
It went viral on social media following a row which erupted during one of the press meets of the Indian leader.
What does the cartoon show?
The cartoon was published with an opinion piece whose headline translates to ‘A clever yet annoying man’. The article stated why India has its eyes on the Nordic region, while the cartoon shows Modi as a “snake charmer” with a fuel-station filling pipe as the snake.
Many netizens were quick to slam the Norwegian daily for the allegedly racist take on India, which has long been depicted as a primitive land of snake charmers, holy elephants and superstitions alone.
The snake charmer is, in particular, historically used by sections of the Western media as a motif for India and its citizens, and has, in recent decades, been widely criticised as a xenophobic trope.
In October 2022, a Spanish newspaper La Vanguardia came under the scanner for using a snake charmer illustration to depict India’s economic growth.
The motif was also mentioned and slammed by Narendra Modi during his 2014 visit to the United States, where he stated that India now does “magic with mouse”, referring to the computer mouse.
A similar comment was made by Modi in January 2013 when he was Gujarat CM, when he stated that India had transformed from a “country of snake charmers, to that of mouse charmers in popular imagination”. He was addressing a Vibrant Gujarat Youth Convention in Gandhinagar.
What happened in Norway?
The virality of the newspaper cartoon came as the prime minister wrapped up his visit to Norway, where a question from a journalist triggered a rebuttal from the Ministry of External Affairs, and sparked a series of debates online and in Indian newsrooms.
That incident occurred after a Norwegian newspaper commentator, Helle Lyng, shared on X a video of PM Modi walking out of the joint statement venue with Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre, stating in the caption that PM Modi did not take her question.
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“Prime minister of India, Narendra Modi, would not take my question, I was not expecting him to,” she said in the post, sharing the video in which she can be heard saying loudly, “Why don’t you take some questions from the freest press in the world?”
Norway currently holds the top spot on the World Press Freedom Index. India, on the other hand, slipped from 154 to 157.
The journalist’s post of Modi exiting the press briefing later spilt over into a presser by the Ministry of External Affairs, especially after Lyng asked why Norway should “trust” India, referring to the alleged human rights violations in the country.
In response, Indian diplomat Sibi George listed reasons as to why New Delhi can be trusted and is a credible partner, and cited India’s civilisational history as evidence.
