It is true that India is falling victim to the victim playing card of religious groups time and again. Despite what the OP claims, it is not just muslim groups that subvert freedom of speech and expression, but all other religious groups. Some obscure group simply has to raise a "My feelings are hurt" card, and the govt in power shamefacedly capitulates. Instead of protecting the filmmakers' or novelists' right of speaking his mind, they act as the personal gunda of the "hurt" people and persecute the real victim, who's mouths have been sealed.
Here is a novel idea to people who's feelings are hurt. If your feelings or sentiments are hurt, GO TO YOUR ROOM AND CRY. There is no shame in that, there is no shame in tears. That's what humans do if their feelings or sentiments are hurt. Or if you want to be vindictive, try to hurt the feelings of whoever hurt your feelings. But to go about physically attacking people, or burning public property, or threatening violence, just because your feelings are hurt, is NOT kosher.
If a person's feelings are truly hurt, that is what he or she would do - go shed some tears. But when people threaten violence and demand police powers to shut down other people's right to express their thoughts, no matter how odious those thoughts may be to you, that is not because your feelings are hurt - that is because you are expressing "manufactured anger".
Remember this, any time you feel like your sentiments have been hurt. Did it make you go cry? If so, then yes, your sentiments have been hurt. That's ok, its a cruel world, sometimes we do have our feelings or sentiments hurt. But are you feeling like burning theaters or throwing stones at buses or beheading somebody who's film you have not seen, who's novel you have not read? Then it is not because your feelings have been hurt, it is because you have imbibed "manufactured anger" - anger that somebody somewhere decided to create for political purposes, and is now being sold across the world.
