A week ago, Chandra Mohan, 22, was an unknown fine arts student completing his masters at university in the western city of Baroda.

Today he is a national cause célèbre for the Indian artistic community after he was charged with offending religious sentiments for his paintings of naked Hindu gods. Hundreds of artists, poets, dancers and writers rallied in cities across the country this week to protest against his treatment and what they described as a growing fascist tendency in India to suppress freedom of expression.

Mr Mohan was arrested last Thursday after a group known as Vishwa Hindu Parishad (World Hindu Council) and the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which rules the western state of Gujarat, complained about his paintings. Right-wing activists stormed the Maharaja Sayajirao University campus, beating the artist and attempting to destroy his work, which was on display for assessment by faculty examiners.

The hardliners objected in particular to a piece entitled The Beautiful Vexation, depicting a ten-headed deity resembling Hindu gods including Ganesh and Vishnu, and an untitled painting of a Christian cross. Other paintings deemed offensive included phallic symbols.

After Mr Mohan’s arrest, Shivaji Panikkar, the dean of the faculty, was suspended by the university for refusing to close the exhibition, which was not open to the public. He went into hiding fearing for his safety.

It is not unusual for artists to be attacked by Hindu nationalists and the latest incident might have gone unnoticed were it not for the reaction of fellow students who staged sit-ins and well-known artists who formed a Free Chandra Mohan Committee. “This has cut across all people concerned with cultural freedom,” Ranjit Hoskote, a poet and committee member, said. “This cannot go on if India is to preserve its claim to be a constitutional democracy.”

The committee and its supporters have claimed a small victory after the police freed Mr Mohan, described by his peers as quiet and diligent, on bail of 5,000 rupees (£60) after he had spent five days behind bars. He still faces several years in prison if convicted of obscenity and inciting religious enmity.

Cultural commentators have been decrying increasing examples of so-called moral policing in a Hindu-majority society that, for all its recent embraces of modern consumerism, remains staunchly conservative.

M.F. Hussain, who is a Muslim and one of India’s most famous painters, is living in self-imposed exile in Dubai and London because of threats from extremists enraged by his depiction of a nude woman posed in the shape of India. The police tried to seize his property last week after a court issued another warrant for his arrest for obscenity. The Supreme Court stopped them, ruling that the 91-year-old should hear all six charges against him at one time in a Delhi court at a later date.

Protests by Indian artists in support of Mr Mohan were held in Bombay, Delhi, Hyderabad, Trivandrum and Baroda. “All across the country, there are all sorts of vile campaigns not just against the artistic community,” the film director Saeed Mirza said at a rally outside the biggest art gallery in Bombay. “Something has gone wrong, so we stand up and protest.”

Jehangir Sabavala, 85, a celebrated painter whose work has been shown by Christie’s and Sotheby’s, described the atmosphere in Gujarat as almost fascist. He said: “There is such a thing as tolerance. Rough-housing people is a sorry state of affairs.”

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