In a multipolar order already strained by great-power competition, the United Nations’ capacity to serve as an impartial arbiter rests on consistent application of its own standards. Recent patterns in the handling of protests reveal a selectivity that erodes that claim. The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) has issued pointed statements on demonstrations in India while adopting markedly milder language toward comparable or more violent episodes in the Global North. Parallel asymmetries appear in coverage by leading western outlets. These discrepancies, compounded by Chinese information operations that amplify negative portrayals of India, consciously downplay New Delhi’s constructive engagement in a world in which both the US and China routinely test institutional rules.
The contrast in official UN language is instructive. In October 2026, amid protests in Delhi over the Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls and the resignation of the Chief Election Commissioner, the OHCHR expressed concern over “reports of mass detentions” of demonstrators, civil-society actors, lawyers and journalists. It called for the right to peaceful assembly to be “fully respected,” for restrictions to meet “strict tests of necessity and proportionality,” and for the “immediate and unconditional release” of anyone arbitrarily detained. By comparison, the same office’s statement on contemporaneous student and high-school protests in France, which involved school blockades, street violence, tear gas, stun grenades, thousands of arrests, and a case in which a minor lost a hand, was more circumscribed. It noted that it was “following with concern” incidents “some of which have turned violent,” urged all sides to keep demonstrations peaceful, and called for no “disproportionate use of force.” The French statement emphasised shared responsibility; the Indian one centred on state action and demanded specific remedial steps.
This differential emphasis is not new. During the 2018-19 gilets jaunes movement in France, which produced extensive property damage, injuries and deaths, UN commentary remained relatively restrained relative to the scrutiny applied to Indian farmers’ protests (2020-21) or earlier citizenship-law demonstrations. European states have themselves faced Amnesty International documentation of systematic restrictions on peaceful assembly across the continent, including the use of anti-terrorism frameworks against climate activists in Germany and Italy. Yet institutional attention and media amplification have not been uniform.
{{/usCountry}}This differential emphasis is not new. During the 2018-19 gilets jaunes movement in France, which produced extensive property damage, injuries and deaths, UN commentary remained relatively restrained relative to the scrutiny applied to Indian farmers’ protests (2020-21) or earlier citizenship-law demonstrations. European states have themselves faced Amnesty International documentation of systematic restrictions on peaceful assembly across the continent, including the use of anti-terrorism frameworks against climate activists in Germany and Italy. Yet institutional attention and media amplification have not been uniform.
{{/usCountry}}Western reporting has often mirrored the same hierarchy of concern. Outlets such as The New York Times, The Guardian and the BBC, based on their fantasies, described the October 2026 Delhi measures as turning the capital into a “fortress,” imposing a “severe lockdown,” or enacting a “draconian” response to youth defiance; all far from what took place in reality. Coverage foregrounded police logistics and detentions while framing the unrest as a major democratic test. Parallel reporting on French protests has more frequently highlighted protester violence, looting, and the political instrumentalisation of student anger ahead of elections, while giving substantial space to government claims that radical-Left actors were seeking electoral advantage--something which they missed in India’s case. Historical patterns are similar: farmers’ protests and Citizenship Amendment Act demonstrations received sustained framing as existential challenges to Indian pluralism, whereas Yellow Vest violence was more often situated within France’s long tradition of street politics and popular discontent with elites. Such framing choices do not invent facts, but they systematically elevate certain contexts of contestation over others, to produce narratives, which they hope can someday be used as facts.
These asymmetries coincide with Chinese efforts to shape external perceptions of India. Beijing has employed coordinated social-media campaigns, documented by researchers examining platforms including Douyin and western sites, to amplify narratives of instability in India’s Northeast, question territorial integrity, and circulate stereotypes of Indian unhygienic or chaotic behaviour. TikTok, banned in India on national-security grounds after 2020 because of its algorithmic capacity to promote or suppress content, remains a vector for such influence elsewhere. By spotlighting alleged Indian shortcomings, these operations divert attention from China’s own documented human-rights issues in Xinjiang and Tibet, its economic slowdown, and its territorial assertions. In a fractured information environment, selective western amplification of Indian domestic contestation can inadvertently reinforce such external narratives.
India has already begun responding in specific cases. Its Permanent Mission in Geneva and the ministry of external affairs have issued formal statements rejecting OHCHR remarks on the Delhi detentions as “misplaced” and an “unwarranted interference,” while explicitly noting the office’s “extreme selectivity” and its lighter treatment of protests in France and elsewhere. These can be expanded into a standing practice. The MEA and Permanent Mission can maintain and periodically release a public dossier that places the exact wording of successive OHCHR statements on Indian protests alongside those issued on France, Germany, Italy and the US, together with arrest figures, injury data and court outcomes from each case. The same material can be circulated as a formal note verbale to the OHCHR and to the Human Rights Council membership before each session, and tabled for discussion under relevant agenda items.
Indian missions can also request that the OHCHR’s own spokesperson briefings include, as a matter of routine, comparative data on protest-related detentions and force used across a defined set of countries, and that the High Commissioner’s oral updates to the Council contain a short consistency annex. Where Chinese State-linked accounts and Douyin content systematically amplify negative Indian imagery while remaining silent on domestic Chinese restrictions, Indian embassies and the ministry of information and broadcasting can document the volume and origin of those campaigns and submit the record to the same UN mechanisms that receive complaints about Indian internal affairs. In bilateral and plurilateral settings-G20, BRICS and Quad, New Delhi could consider inserting a standing agenda item on “selective application of human-rights commentary,” supported by the side-by-side language and data. These steps convert an observed pattern into a documented institutional record rather than a rhetorical claim.
The cumulative effect of such documented disparities is a measurable decline in the perceived impartiality of multilateral human-rights mechanisms, which, in turn, narrows the political space available to large democracies seeking to advance collective goods in an already fragmented international system.
(The views expressed are personal)
This article is authored by Sriparna Pathak, professor, China Studies and International Relations, Jindal School of International Affairs, OP Jindal Global University, Sonipat.