NEW DELHI — One night a few years ago, a film journalist in Mumbai received a call from her home saying that the police had come to arrest her. Terrified, she tried to find out what she might have done. She learned that in an article she had written a month earlier about the bathroom habits of superstars, she had mentioned an actress’s dog, named Mustafa.

She also learned that night that Mustafa is a term of respect for the Prophet Muhammad. A small-time Muslim politician had seen in her story a long shot at fame. He had filed a criminal complaint against the writer, claiming to have been offended by the dog’s name. The journalist had to seek bail.

For those who take offense, India is highly secular. People of all religions can send a writer to prison. This month, following the massacre of Charlie Hebdo staff members in Paris, India’s urbane debated and upheld the virtues of free speech. But freedom of expression in India is essentially this: You may create whatever you wish, but if some people are aggrieved, then you may have committed a crime.

How democratic India really is, especially where free speech is concerned, depends on a person’s good luck on a given day and the room he occupies at a moment in time. In a police station, all rights of an individual are subordinate to what an officer thinks is safe for his career. In the lower courts, those rights are usually subordinate to public opinion. In the higher courts, there is often an exalted view of liberty and free speech, as judicial patriarchs attempt to write great English prose. In a newsroom, an Indian’s theoretical freedom of expression is often surrendered.