These days, one could be forgiven for thinking that the only people whose freedom of expression the state is willing to protect are those who resort to violence in the name of religion — Hindu, Muslim or Christian. (Let’s not forget what happened in progressive Kerala when Mary Roy tried to stage ‘Jesus Christ, Superstar’ at her school. Or when cinema halls screened The Da Vinci Code.) Indeed, not only does it protect their freedom of expression, it looks like it also protects their freedom to criminally assault and violate. Not a single perpetrator of such violence has been apprehended and punished in the last decade or more that has seen an alarming rise in such street or mob censorship. Not in the case of Deepa Mehta’s film; not in the attack on Ajeet Cour’s Academy of Fine Arts in Delhi; not in M.F. Husain’s case; not in the violation of the Bhandarkar Institute; not at MS University in Baroda; not in the assault on Taslima Nasreen in Hyderabad this August. I could list many, many more.

We would do well to remember that the more regressive the state is in response to attacks like this, the more aggressive the mob will become. The simultaneous absence and presence of the state at these moments entrenches the vulnerability of the individual while at the same time ensuring the ‘invincibility’ of the mob. By their very nature, mobs form and dissolve, disappearing as an entity that can be charged; individuals, on the other hand, are isolated and easily targeted.

... contd.