‘Lost right to write’: Months after ‘forced' exit, French journo details ‘Modi’s autocratic turn’

Over four months after she was “forced to leave India”, French journalist Vanessa Dougnac has written a detailed account of how she was “banned from practicing my profession as a journalist” in a cover story for French magazine La Croix L’Hebdo.

Dougnac, who had lived in India for 23 years and is married to an Indian citizen, was first denied permission to work as a journalist in India in September 2022. Newslaundry had reported in depth on her exit from India amid OCI proceedings.

In the piece titled “Goodbye, Delhi: After 25 years in India, a journalist is forced to leave the country” published in La Croix on May 16,  she mentioned Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s “autocratic turn” and “intensifying crackdown”, leading to “self-censorship” in newsrooms.    

“Based in Delhi, I had been the regional correspondent for French, Swiss, and Belgian newspapers since the early 2000s. The authorities had just made it imperative for foreign correspondents who had the Overseas Citizen of India (OCI) card to obtain a work permit. This permit was "DENIED" to me, in capital letters. Instantly, and without explanation, I lost the right to write articles,” she wrote.

In the article, the veteran journalist said she first received a message banning her from practicing “my profession as a journalist” in September 2022. It was the beginning of a “long fight”, wrote the journalist, adding that she was advised to keep a “low profile, stay in the capital, and wait for the effects of interventions by the French Embassy”, but “people who promised to help never called back”.

In January this year, Dougnac received a two-page “typewritten letter by the Ministry of Home Affairs”, ordering her to “surrender my residence permit” and accusing her of “having violated rules, of writing ‘critical’ and ‘malicious’ articles creating ‘a negative and biased perception of India’, of ‘disturbing public order and peace’, and of acting against ‘the interests of sovereignty and integrity of India’.” 

Self-censorship, trolls  

Dougnac wrote that the journalists had witnessed the “hardening of repression” after Narendra Modi's second term in 2019, as the government “targeted intellectuals, researchers, critical voices... and our profession. The previous year, the offices of several media were raided, journalists spied on, and others, in Kashmir and elsewhere, detained or targeted”. 

She wrote that under “increasing yoke of visa acquisitions and access restrictions”, a precautionary paranoia took hold of foreign correspondents. “Journalists abandoned WhatsApp to switch to the Signal app. Some activated a timer to make their messages disappear. Others used circumlocutions in their conversations. Fear was tamed.”

She said the intensifying crackdown had led to “newsrooms dominated by self-censorship”. “The victories were limited to publishing a critical piece of information as a brief note. Investigations had disappeared.”

Meanwhile, “television journalists” celebrated the Modi era, the journalist wrote. “These were the ‘Godi media’, a term coined by the famous journalist Ravish Kumar to evoke the servility of a dog to its master.” 

“On Republic TV, Aaj Tak, or Times Now, their debates were partisan tribunals that distorted facts to glorify Hindu nationalism and stir up anti-Muslim sentiments. In the arena of Twitter, critical minds were branded as traitors to the nation and victims of armies of trolls.”

Dougnac too was allegedly branded as an “anti-Hindu journalist” by a “government propaganda site” as the news of her expulsion leaked in the Indian press. “Messages flooded my phone and my Twitter account went wild.” 

Newslaundry reported in-depth about the events leading to Dougnac’s exit, the uncertainties facing foreign journalists in India and the shrinking press freedom in the country. Read here and here.