For years, Bharat has been expected to accept criticism from abroad in the name of journalism, academic freedom, and human rights. But there is a fundamental difference between legitimate scrutiny and a narrative ecosystem that repeatedly presents Bharat through the same narrow collection of accusations while giving far less attention to its achievements, complexities, and national interests. The question raised by the Kutniti Foundation’s August 2026 field report is therefore not whether Bharat should be criticized; it unquestionably can and should be when facts warrant it, but who gets to define Bharat for the rest of the world, what information is amplified, what is ignored, and whether those doing the defining apply the same standards to themselves and to countries hostile to Bharat.
A section of the Western media establishment has increasingly acquired the confidence of an external moral authority over Bharat. Reporters sitting thousands of kilometers away, commentators who spend little time understanding Bharat’s civilizational complexity, activists operating through international advocacy networks, and academics working within Western institutions can produce narratives about Bharatiya society that are subsequently repeated by one another until an interpretation begins to resemble an established fact. The problem is not that a foreign journalist has no right to criticize Bharat. The problem arises when selective reporting, loaded terminology, unverified claims, ideological assumptions, and one-sided sourcing are presented to global audiences as the complete story. A sovereign civilization of more than a billion people should not be reduced to whatever controversy happens to generate the greatest attention in London, New York, Washington, Brussels, or Toronto.
The names deserve to be put on the record: Mujib Mashal of The New York Times and Jordi Joan Baños of La Vanguardia. These are not anonymous social media accounts or obscure bloggers; they are journalists working for major international publications that wield enormous power to shape how millions of people outside Bharat understand the country. The issue is simple: these journalists reporting on Bharat are pushing narratives that echo Pakistan’s propaganda while downplaying the reality of Pakistan-sponsored terrorism, POK issues, etc. When reporters consistently portray Bharat as the problem while giving little attention to terrorism, radicalism, and Pakistan’s role in destabilizing the region, their reporting deserves serious scrutiny. This is just one example; the whole Kutniti report reveals the wider agenda of global media propaganda against Bharat.
3.1 billion views: Bharat is being discussed even where Bharatiyas cannot participate
One of the report’s most striking findings concerns TikTok. Bharat banned TikTok in 2020, meaning Bharatiya users cannot publish, comment, or directly participate on the platform, while audiences elsewhere continue to produce and consume content about Bharat. Kutniti claims that Bharat-related TikTok videos generated 3.1 billion views in August 2026, compared with a platform-wide monthly active-user figure of 2.21 billion cited in the report. It also lists five of the month’s most-watched videos that it categorized as negative: the largest received 24.3 million views and 827,100 likes, another received 11.4 million views, and another received 10.6 million views. Even more revealing is the contrast between the scale of this conversation and Bharat’s inability to participate in it on the same platform. The issue is therefore not simply whether one video is unfair. It is about whether millions of people encounter Bharat through an information environment in which the subject of the story has a limited ability to respond.
Mujib Mashal and the New York Times: when Bangladesh’s Hindu victims become a story about Bharat
The report’s most direct criticism is aimed at Mujib Mashal, South Asia Bureau Chief of The New York Times. According to Kutniti’s review of his published work, Mashal produced 155 articles about Bharat over three years, of which the Foundation categorized 90% as negative, 6% as neutral, and only 4% as positive. The report argues that Bharat repeatedly appears through a narrow collection of themes: disasters, democratic decline, alleged persecution of Muslims, and poverty, while areas such as economic growth, startups, science, and culture receive comparatively little attention. Its most forceful example concerns the killing of Dipu Das, a Hindu in Bangladesh. According to the Foundation’s analysis, coverage of the killing moved into a broader discussion of religious intolerance in South Asia and subsequently toward Muslims in Bharat. This is precisely the kind of framing that deserves examination. When a Hindu is murdered in Bangladesh, why should the narrative instinctively pivot toward making Bharat part of the explanation? If the victim is in Bangladesh and the perpetrators are operating there, the first journalistic obligation should be to explain the crime and its local circumstances, not automatically redirect the moral spotlight toward Bharat.
The “yes, but” formula: Bharat achieves something, and the achievement is immediately qualified
Kutniti identifies what it calls a recurring “but” in foreign reporting. Bharat-US cooperation is presented alongside allegations concerning democracy; the G20 is discussed through inequality and minority issues; military action against terrorist targets in Pakistan is followed by attention to aircraft losses; even security precautions involving birds become material for ridicule. A free press has every right to investigate failures, challenge government, and scrutinize institutions. The deeper question is whether the same standard is applied consistently. A country cannot be understood honestly if every achievement is treated as a footnote to failure while every failure becomes evidence of the country’s supposed character. The report says that in three years and 155 articles, only two Bharatiya stories received what it regarded as genuine praise: Chandrayaan and Bharat’s solar mission. That finding, if representative of the publication’s wider coverage, should trouble anyone who believes international journalism should describe reality rather than reinforce a predetermined image.
Jordi Joan Baños: zero positive articles and a remarkably hostile vocabulary
The report then turns its attention to Jordi Joan Baños, Asia correspondent of Spain’s La Vanguardia, and the criticism becomes even sharper. Kutniti examined 57 articles over three years and categorized 93% as negative, 7% as neutral, and 0% as positive. The Foundation says that in Baños’ portrayal, Bharat repeatedly becomes associated with Hindu fascism, backwardness, primitiveness, and exploitation. Most troubling is the disparity in vocabulary. Kutniti contrasts his reporting on other Asian countries, including North Korea, Indonesia, China, and Thailand, with his treatment of Bharat. The report also highlights his coverage of Vande Mataram in Bengal, where it says the headline characterized the development as “Hindu supremacism,” while contrasting this with his more colorful treatment of China’s restrictions on a protest song in Hong Kong. Whether one agrees with every comparison or not, the larger journalistic question is legitimate: why does the same kind of state action receive dramatically different moral vocabulary depending upon whether it occurs in Bharat or elsewhere? Language matters because headlines often become the entire story for international audiences.
Operation Sindoor and the refusal to see Bharat on its own terms
The Kutniti report also criticizes the way Operation Sindoor was covered, arguing that certain foreign narratives discussed Bharat and Kashmir almost as though they were separate entities and evaluated Bharat’s military operation in terms of secondary economic consequences rather than its strategic purpose. The Foundation specifically criticizes Baños for focusing on Dassault’s share price when discussing the operation. That criticism captures a wider problem with foreign coverage of Bharat: events are frequently interpreted through Western or Pakistani expectations rather than through Bharat’s own strategic calculations. Bharat is expected to justify its security decisions according to standards imposed from outside, while the security environment created by terrorism, cross-border militancy, and decades of instability is often treated as background noise. A sovereign nation cannot be permanently expected to explain its security decisions to audiences that have already decided that its assertiveness is itself suspicious. Bharat’s military and diplomatic choices should be understood in the context of terrorism and national security rather than reduced to a morality play.
From newsrooms to Brussels: Pakistan’s narrative does not stop at the border
The report’s concerns extend beyond journalists. Kutniti examined a Brussels event concerning the Indus Waters Treaty, describing significant Pakistani diplomatic involvement and an apparent imbalance in representation. According to the report, the event featured senior Pakistani political and diplomatic figures, Pakistani media representatives, and self-described bloggers from Bharat-occupied Kashmir, while no Bharatiya speaker was present. The Foundation argues that this allowed Pakistan’s interpretation of the water dispute to dominate proceedings. Pakistani representatives portrayed Bharat as responsible for Pakistan’s water problems and accused it of weaponizing water and seeking hegemonic control. The report further argues that Islamabad is attempting to internationalize what is fundamentally a bilateral dispute by taking its narrative into European think tanks and policy circles.
The global conference circuit: 29 events, 10 countries, and Bharat as a permanent subject
Kutniti’s mapping of September 2026 identifies 29 events across 10 countries where Bharat or issues surrounding it are discussed. The report highlights recurring themes such as caste, Kashmir, and Hindutva, with events at institutions including Harvard, Yale, Berkeley, King’s College London, SOAS, Cornell, Michigan, the University of Pennsylvania, and others. It also points to a September program at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, where it expects Pakistan to raise Kashmir and Bharat to exercise its right of reply. The Foundation’s broader argument is not that universities or international organizations should stop studying Bharat. Quite the opposite: Bharat should be studied extensively. But who defines the questions? Who selects the vocabulary? Who gets invited to speak? Who is treated as an authority? And how often are Bharatiya scholars and institutions given an opportunity to challenge assumptions formed thousands of kilometers away? When the international conversation about a civilization of Bharat’s size repeatedly begins with caste, Kashmir, or Hindutva while achievements in science, infrastructure, technology, entrepreneurship, and cultural preservation receive far less attention, the imbalance becomes impossible to ignore.
A confident civilization does not fear scrutiny. Bharatiya democracy can withstand criticism. What Bharat should reject is the double standard in which criticism becomes a permanent identity assigned to the country rather than an examination of individual policies or events. The report’s figures demonstrate the scale of the challenge: 3.1 billion Bharat-related TikTok views in a single month, 155 articles examined in the case of one New York Times journalist, 57 in the case of another foreign correspondent, 29 international events across 10 countries, and an expanding network of diplomatic, academic, media, and activist conversations in which Bharat is repeatedly placed under examination. Bharat, therefore, needs its own serious global communications architecture: Bharatiya scholars participating in Western universities, professional international media operations, rapid multilingual fact-checking, diplomats engaging think tanks, historians challenging distorted narratives, scientists communicating Bharat’s achievements, and journalists willing to investigate both Bharat’s successes and failures without ideological blinders. The goal should not be propaganda. It should be narrative sovereignty, the right of Bharat to be understood in its full complexity, rather than through a template written elsewhere.
The Kutniti Foundation report ultimately points to a battle far larger than any individual journalist, newspaper, or activist organization. Bharat must no longer allow foreign newsrooms, hostile commentators, or ideological networks to dictate how the world sees it. When reporting repeatedly amplifies allegations against Bharat while downplaying Pakistan-sponsored terrorism and the threats faced by Bharat, that double standard must be exposed and challenged. Do not manufacture a caricature and call it journalism. Bharat is a civilization and a rising global power with its own voice, its own evidence, and its own story; those who seek to define Bharat through propaganda should be confronted with facts and denied the privilege of the final word.
