The Sri Ram Sene, denizens of some phantasmagoric video game called Aspirational Taliban, declared last week that they would cut off the tongue of any writer who dared criticise Hinduism.

Looked at practically, this is a puzzling threat, as writers don’t write with their tongues but with their minds and hands. But cultural battles are not literal ones. The tongue is indeed a potent symbol as it has so many meanings. Babies stick out their tongues as they learn to use their mouths. They also put everything in their mouths to understand it, because their mouths have more nerve endings per square millimeter than any other part of their body. Our mouths and tongue develop faster than our hands.