I was shocked to hear that the government is banning porn. This is a crippling blow to the advancement of human knowledge. As it is, they’ve banned sex education. How will our children learn? We are condemning future generations to a lifetime of groping in the dark, hoping against hope. As our precious freedoms are being stripped away one by one, will we not stand up? If not now, then when? Let us examine the facts, and identify those who march against us.
The decision to declare war on porn was taken on September 5, 2014, at a meeting of CRAC (Cyber Regulation Advisory Committee), in Conference Hall No 1007 of DEITy (Department of Electronics and Information Technology). This means that DEITy has over 1,000 conference halls. Next time you cannot find a venue for a wedding, this is a point worth noting.
As a result of decisions taken at this meeting, chaired by Shri Ravi Shankar Prasad, we will join an elite group of countries, which includes China, Saudi Arabia and Morocco. Five secretaries of the Indian Administrative Service helped to manage the meeting. FICCI, ASSOCHAM, CII and NASSCOM have all promised full assistance, which shows that while they are very laissez faire on business freedoms, when it comes to personal freedoms, not so much. The CBI has suggested involving Interpol. The honourable minister has said that the matter should be viewed “in the context of Indian culture and moral obligation toward society”. It has been agreed to use web filters to block not just porn sites, but any sites which “hurt the sentiments of Indian society”. The Government will also be launching a massive advertising campaign to educate the public about the many evils of porn. In case you want to know exactly who said what, you can check out the minutes of the meeting on the Medianama site.
This step is being taken to prevent crimes against women. Many factors contribute to this, but the Government prefers simpler solutions, such as banning things, and changing names. These measures show that our hearts are in the right place, and they take very little effort. It’s like renaming a city Chennai or Mumbai. The city doesn’t benefit, but you get a warm, fuzzy feeling.
This decision has grave social, economic, political and human dimensions. In the future, Indians on holiday abroad will hardly ever leave their hotel rooms. Our international students will flunk left, right and centre. Google Glass sales will boom, as the law will not cover spectacles. Millions of youth will no longer be able to research Sunny Leone’s career. MLAs and MPs will have nothing to watch in Parliament. Future generations will grow up never knowing about Savita Bhabhi. Dark days are ahead of us.
In this, as in many other things, we will have two kinds of people. Those who are above the law, and those who are under its boot. There will be porn haves and porn have-nots, with select access for VIPs, who will need to carefully judge whether something is pornographic or not. We’ll follow the Victorian principle, which ruled that porn should be allowed only for the select few whose minds are not open to immoral influences. This is one more thing — apart from criminal records and red beacons — that will divide the rulers from the ruled.
On the bright side, there is an economic benefit. This is going to boost employment. It’s not an easy job to suppress millions of porn sites. Thousands of people will be required, who will spend a lifetime in government service looking at porn. The rush will be unprecedented. Admission tests will be heavily competitive. Training institutions will spring up, with names like Porn Star, XXXpert and Orgasm Launchers. Bright young boys from the villages will have avenues for advancement. Eventually, Chetan Bhagat will write One Night at the Porn Centre.
However, this whole thing may not be as simple as it looks. Personally, I feel quite optimistic because there could be wheels within wheels. It could all be part of a master plan. A national cleansing before the reintroduction of ancient texts and traditions. We are the nation of tantriks, who can balance elephants on their organs, and the Kama Sutra, which combines sexual activity with gymnastics in a unique and memorable way. The Kama Sutra could be a key thrust area in our new linguistic approach. It was originally written in Sanskrit, and everyone knows that translations can never really capture the flavour. Promoting it could be the fastest way to spread the language, and bring some joy to the lives of Sanskrit scholars in India, who have toiled so hard and received so little.
In this way, we will free ourselves from foreign domination. According to reliable statistics, 99 per cent of the porn currently viewed in India is of foreign origin. Once these foreign influences have been purged entirely, our soil will be ripe for a local flowering. Which means that this step by DEITy, duly supported by CRAC, is not the blow against personal freedom that we fear it to be. It’s a simple case of import substitution.
Shovon Chowdhury is the author of The Competent Authority. Follow him on twitter >@shovonc