The most important thing about the porn ban is that it has nothing to do with porn. Instead it has everything to do with how the government surreptitiously, using the crutches of the Supreme Court wants to enter your bedroom and control what you do within the private confines of the four walls of your home. Consider the sequence of events. There is no formal order. The government simply conveyed this decision verbally to leading Internet Service providers and telecom operators. After a couple of days, sexually frustrated customers realising that the ISPs are depriving them of their five minutes of fun, started barraging the call centres of telecom companies. The ISPs and Telcos start panicking. After all no company wants to be hammered by angry and in this case sexually frustrated customers. The story goes viral on social media, then newspapers and TV channels start picking up the story. Then, the government puts together a hastily drafted order dated July 31, ostensibly because the Supreme Court asked them to.
To make things clear. The Supreme Court has not passed any order. Observations made by the Supreme Court Chief Justice Honourable HL Dattu are only to the contrary. Here’s what the CJI said, "Such interim orders cannot be passed by this court. Somebody may come to the court and say 'look I am above 18 and how can you stop me from watching it within the four walls of my room?' It is a violation of Article 21 (right to personal liberty)." From my limited understanding of the law, governments can’t pass orders on the basis of observations by a court. It has to be based on the order of a court. And here, with the CJI putting the onus on the government, bureaucrats wanted to cover their backsides at the next hearing, and thereby came up with this ingenious way of identifying and targeting 857 websites who purportedly show “revenge porn.” A quick look at these websites will reveal that they show all kinds of porn and that this list of 857 is arbitrary and has been put together by some babu in the office of the Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DeitY)
Just take a look at the list of countries where porn is banned: Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Libya, Egypt, Iran, Pakistan. They are either downright autocratic regimes or theocratic ones. Is this the kind of elite list that India, 21st century progressive, wannabe superpower India, wants to be a part of? By the way, among the top 10 consumers of porn, India currently ranks 6th. Pakistan is at No. 1. I’m sure this is one area where we are willing to be defeated by our not-so-friendly neighbours! Also, six out of the top ten consumers of porn have officially banned porn. Another piece of evidence why banning something actually only increases people’s curiosity about the object of the ban.
What is most depressing about this ban is the selective hypocrisy of the people who claim to be custodians of Indian culture and values. Isn’t India the land of Kamasutra? Isn’t India the proud land of Khajuraho and Ajanta and Ellora? So what is the government planning to do next? Bulldoze those caves because they feature semi-erotic poses? Guess who else destroyed ancient architecture? Remember Bamiyan?
There is no study in the world that conclusively proves a connection between violent crime and watching porn. On the contrary, there are studies to show that porn acts as a vent for release of pent up sexual frustrations. In a country where a large populace of male folk are sexually repressed, banning porn will most certainly only be counter-productive. The government’s argument is that we need to put a clamp on child porn. That’s a conversation worth having. Many countries across the globe are having that conversation, including England. But that’s not the conversation we are having. There is no way any government can crack down on 857 websites and say we have cracked the whip on child porn. By the most conservative estimates there are at least 40 million porn websites out there. Not even Google can control them. Not even the Great Firewall of China can.
To end on a lighter note. Naturally, the government is getting panned on Twitter for the porn ban. As one ingenious tweeter put it, “Modiji toh achhe din ki baat karte the. Achhe din toh nahin aaye. Ab achhi raatein bhi gayi.”
Comments
0 comment