New Delhi, Aug. 11 -- On July 31, after nearly 19 years, Taslima Nasrin returned to Kolkata. The following day, she appeared at an anti-fundamentalism programme at Rabindra Sadan, where West Bengal Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari joined the welcome and promised her security whenever she visited the state.

The scene invited an obvious comparison. The Left Front, long associated with secular politics in India, had failed to keep an atheist and feminist writer in Kolkata. The BJP government now offered her protection.

Yet Nasrin's history in Bengal raises a more enduring question. Her case shows how governments decide which controversial voices they are prepared to protect, which become inconvenient, and which later acquire political value...