The journalist who asked Modi a question

When I met Helle Lyng Svendsen in Oslo this Monday, she was writing about the proposed upgrade of Norway’s busiest train station. “They want to build the station all over again, as a tall tower,” she explained. “And many don’t like the idea.”

In her current job at the Norwegian newspaper Dagsavisen, Svendsen covers “labour markets and regular people’s lives”. But the 28-year-old journalist has previously reported from the United States, where she door-stepped politicians and even posed questions to Donald Trump.

In May, when she heard that India’s prime minister was coming to Oslo for a state visit, she could not resist pitching an idea to her editor: how about asking him a question? She knew his reputation for avoiding press conferences.

“My boss said just do it at the best possible time,” she recounted, with a smile. “I said there won’t ever be a great time. But I will find the most comfortable one.”

And so, on May 18, as Prime Minister Narendra Modi walked off the stage after shaking hands with his Norwegian counterpart, Svendsen’s voice rang out behind him. “Prime Minister Modi, why don’t you take some questions from the freest press in the world?”

The young journalist captured the moment on her camera and posted the video on X. “I was like maybe it could reach some people in India,” she said.

When I last checked, the video had over 11 million views on X.

By attempting to corner Modi, Svendsen had ended up sparking a firestorm about press freedom in India. In the process, she had also become a target of online harassment. She was called a foreign spy. Some accused her of being on the payroll of China, others linked her to the Congress party in India.

On social media, trolls dug out her personal photos, which left her amused. “I was like, you have way too many photos of yourself with a glass of wine out there, why do you have so many?” she laughed. “Some of them, I hadn't even published myself, I had been tagged on them by friends. But they found them, which is impressive.”

Svendsen’s phone number and address were also leaked online, which got her mother worried about her safety. “No one is going to come from India to be mad at me,” she reassured her mother.

But it was not just trolls on social media. Journalists from Indian TV channels also took a hostile line of questioning while interviewing her. “I did not want to be rude and say maybe you should start grilling your politicians,” Svendsen said.

She added: “Ideally, in the Indian media, it should have been about Modi being pressed, not about me. But they made it about me.”

As a reporter in the US, Svendsen said she used to be fascinated with the American media, but she has now concluded that “the Indian media is American media on steroids”. “Right-wing platforms there will do critical coverage of the Iran war – not so much as the CNN does, but they will still do it,” she explained. “But in India, it feels like there is no critical coverage from these giant channels.”

Not that she thinks everything is perfect with the Norwegian press. In particular, she is disappointed with the way it covers visiting foreign leaders. “There is so much investigative journalism going on in Norway, with journalists trying to make sure politicians don’t get the easy way out,” she said. “But there is just something about a state visit that makes everyone go a little, ‘oh yeah, we’re just here to watch.”

She rejects this conservative approach. “We are not there to just take notes and transcribe them,” she said.

As I sat speaking to her, I was impressed by her clarity of thought. We were meeting on the sidelines of the Oslo Freedom Forum, where I had met scores of outstanding activists, journalists and writers, many of whom had spent decades challenging authoritarianism in their countries. But there was something about Svendsen’s steadfastness that moved me.

She had never experienced a stifling of freedom – she lived and worked in a country where journalists could easily access the corridors of power and go up to the prime minister, or any other politician, and ask a question. And yet she knew the value of press freedom and cared enough to stand up for others who did not have it.

I was also struck by how open and accountable she had been, responding to even hostile questions thrown at her. Like many other young journalists, she had a natural ease with social media – and she put it to good use. When Congress leader Rahul Gandhi shared her post on X, she immediately wrote back to him to ask for an interview. He did not reply. “It would have been fun if he did,” she laughed.

But what impressed me the most was that like all good journalists, Svendsen was quietly working on follow-up stories linked to Modi’s visit. We exchanged notes, like journalists often do, and concluded that, who knows, maybe in the future, we could even collaborate on something.

On that exciting note, we walked out of our meeting room into the courtyard of the Oslo Concert Hall, where people who had come to attend the forum milled about.

An attendee from the Indian diaspora came up to Svendsen and asked: “Are you the journalist who asked Modi a question?” She nodded, looking a bit embarrassed. “Thank you so much,” the man said effusively, adding quickly: “I won’t be able to say this in India.”