It is the BJP that has emerged as Nasreen’s unexpected champion, offering her shelter in Rajasthan, demanding that she be declared as a political refugee. Even by India’s low standards of political morality, the BJP’s stand is astoundingly hypocritical, given the record of the party and its ideological mates in leading violent campaigns on grounds of social or religious disagreement.

The BJP’s pro-Nasreen stand is no evidence of a volte-face on the issue of artistic freedom — which, even as a ruse, would sit oddly with its and its sister organisation, the VHP’s, shenanigans at the Baroda School of Art this May or its virulent campaign against M.F. Husain. This is perhaps why the party is demanding that Nasreen be treated as a ‘political’ refugee, regardless of the fact that the opposition she represents is social rather than political.

The BJP’s unexpected show of solidarity with the beleaguered Bangladeshi writer is aimed more at showing up what it believes is the hypocrisy of its political and ideological opponents: Hindutvawadis having long held that Indians who believe in secularism, especially Communists, ‘favour’ Muslims over Hindus. It is testimony to the dogged persistence with which the BJP has made its case over decades and partly to the changing environment in the world in the wake of increasing incidents of Islamic terrorism that its argument has been finding favour even among the more liberal sections of society. The argument gaining ground goes that Muslim fundamentalism being as bad as Hindu fundamentalism, the right to criticise both should be fervently protected.

In its appearance of even-handedness, this line of reasoning seems faultless. It is also in tune with the tide in international opinion against political correctness. The furore over the publication of the Danish cartoons for instance, led many in the West to question how far it wishes to sacrifice its traditional freedoms for the sake of illiberal cultures, even when they form part of the melting pot in their own countries.

The problem, then, given the growing articulation for the right to freedom of expression, indeed the demand for freedom of expression to take precedence over minority or other sensitivities, is: why is there so little support in general for it? Nasreen’s plight may have received widespread media coverage but it is unlikely to provoke public outrage. For years India’s best-known painter, M.F. Husain, has been forced to stay out of the country for his personal safety. Libraries and cinema houses have been ransacked with no major incidence of public protest. And while mob violence at the Baroda School of Art and the jailing of a young artist did bring the art community out on the streets, it did not succeed in altering the environment for freedom of expression. Artists continue to be vulnerable. Acutely so. And from what one can see, it is not an issue that actively engages the public mind.

Why is this so? Could it be perhaps because the growing demand for self-interest, both at the individual and national level has left us incapable of sustaining idealism in any field? The overwhelming push today is towards expediency. One cannot imagine India’s long silence on Burma, for instance, passing off with so little negative comment in an earlier era. The BJP’s sustained campaign against ‘favouritism’ towards the minorities similarly glosses over the fact that there are vulnerable groups in society that need protection from the prejudices of the majority. Times change. And it is likely that the excesses of notions such as political correctness need to be corrected. But what is being eroded from our consciousness is sympathy for the underdog. The artist then is perhaps just one more casualty of the politics of pragmatism.

Mumbai-based Shah is author of ‘Hope, Hypocrisy and Television in Urban India’