The Censor Board’s views were challenged and the challenge went upto the European Court of Human Rights, which held that “Having reached the conclusion that they did, as to the blasphemous content of the film, it cannot be said that authorities overstepped their margin of appreciation.”

It is a different matter that in England the law of blasphemy is available only against an act of outrage and insult to Christianity. When a magistrate refused to issue summons for blasphemy against Salman Rushdie and the publishers of The Satanic Verses, Lord Watkins stated “We have no doubt that as the law now stands, it does not extend to religions other than Christianity.” Efforts to amend the law in England and bring other religions at par with Christianity have not succeeded.

The proponents of the liberal view argue that artists should have the freedom to give vent to their expression even if the same is blasphemous or offensive to religion. Followers of religions must choose to look in the other direction. That is what normally happens. Except for marginal protests, India does not witness the kind of outrage we saw in the Danish cartoon case. There is no need for any protesting citizen to take the law into his hands. The machinery of law must be allowed to operate in such cases. At the same time, the perversion in the definition of secularism as being synonymous with majority-bashing must end. This perversion was visible in the Vadodara incident. The strategy was — don’t let the people know what the contents of the two paintings are. Carry on the debate on artistic freedom in the abstract and criticise the whole idea of moral policing. Society does not need moral policemen. It can do well without those who pass on blasphemy as a part of their artistic freedom.

... contd.