Kamlesh Vaswani’s PIL
seeking to ban the viewing of pornography and make it a non-bailable offence
has raised eyebrows. Columnists and social media commentators have greeted the
idea with shock, raising issues such as social liberty, sexual freedom, and the
fact that the mere banning of pornography might not bring down the incidence of
rape. On the surface of it, this sounds politically correct but the reality is
much more complex.
Take two facts. First, the
two men arrested for raping the five-year-old in Delhi were watching porn
before they stepped out and abducted the girl. Second, Google Trends shows that
in 2012, New Delhi recorded the highest percentage worldwide for the number of
times the word ‘porn’ was searched online. And National Crime Records Bureau
data for the same year show that 706 rapes were reported in Delhi, the highest
in the last decade and more than double the number for 2002.
In the West
Too simplistic a
correlation? Perhaps. But does that mean we can afford to ignore the parallel?
The world over, governments and sociologists are struggling with the issue of
untrammelled access to pornography and the alarming rise in incidents of
violent rape and child abuse. In London, Prime Minister David Cameron is set to
announce a government-backed code of conduct that will block pornography in
public spaces such as cafes and railway stations where children are likely to
be present.
Liberal Iceland’s existing
laws banning pornography are similar to India’s — vague and rarely enforced.
The government there is drafting a law, much to the horror of some of its wired
and freethinking citizens, that seeks to ban pornography altogether to protect
children from violent sexual imagery. AGuardian report quotes an Icelandic
Interior Ministry spokesperson: “When a 12-year-old types ‘porn’ into Google,
he or she is not going to find photos of naked women out on a country field,
but very hardcore and brutal violence.”
The problem with pornography
is just that. It is not so much about erotica, as its advocates will have us
believe, as it is about extreme violence, degradation and subjugation of women,
and the violation of children and teenagers. It extols rape, defilement and
mutilation. Most dangerously, it mainstreams all of this and packages it as the
“normal.” This is lethal in a place like India, where large numbers of people
leapfrog from a state of total ignorance about even ordinary sex to direct
exposure to vicious abuse.
Documenting abuse
As the pornography industry
thrives by getting more extreme each day, sociologists have correspondingly
begun to note that gang rapes have risen, the age of the rapists has fallen,
and the violence is much more brutal today. One report quotes U.S. Department
of Justice statistics that show the percentage of rapes involving two or more
offenders increasing from seven per cent in 1994-1998 to 10 per cent in
2005-2010.
In last year’s Steubenville
High School rape in Ohio, U.S., when a high schoolgirl was doped and repeatedly
violated by her schoolmates, two other appalling facts emerged. One, the
rapists uploaded photos of the acts on social media where it went viral; and
second, students who witnessed the acts said they did not recognise the acts as
rape. In the last few months, two teenagers, Rehtaeh Parsons and Audrey Potts,
in the U.S. and Canada, respectively, have committed suicide after being
gang-raped by 16- and 17-year-old boys who then posted the photos online. Let
us not forget our own MMS scandals involving schoolchildren.
Blurring lines
This trend of online
documentation of abuse follows closely on the footsteps of porn websites that
actively encourage the posting of real-life pictures of girls caught unawares
or of pictures taken of them with hidden cameras. In other words, the lines are
already blurring between pornographic websites and social network websites.
What was once an explicit image on a clandestine website could today be a
picture of a classmate on Facebook.
It might be statistically
impossible to directly link the viewing of pornography to rape, but it is
undeniable that its mainstreaming is actively encouraging and endorsing a
culture of abuse of women and children. Recent news reports, in fact, have
quoted counsellors who say that obsessive porn viewing is today a leading cause
of marital abuse and divorce in India.
The link between violence in
films and the increased rate of violence in society is equally unverifiable,
but it’s interesting that this medium has always been filtered by some form of
certification. How then is a medium that is inherently much more dangerous left
so unregulated?
The existing IT Act, which
stipulates three years’ imprisonment for publishing and transmitting obscene
material electronically, is followed more in the breach. Following the PIL, the
Supreme Court has asked the Ministries of Information Technology, Information
and Broadcasting, and Home Affairs to come up with some answers by April 29.
Whether it is stricter policing and stiffer (and implemented) punishments, or
some sort of technologically feasible filters, or steep levies on the viewing
of such content, some adequate response is required, something that makes it
more difficult to access porn than ticking a box that asks if you are 18.
Yes, freedoms are precious
and worth fighting for, but just because some of our men are not mature enough
to enjoy these freedoms responsibly, should our children and women be made to
pay the price?
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