Saturday, July 08, 2006

Pornography! Welcome to India

It’s high time we welcomed pornography into India with open arms. We need Playboy magazine, adult movies, dance bars and legal prostitution.

How long can we hide under the illusion that we are a nation of morals, culture and high values, when everything we do actually shows that we are in fact immoral, barbaric and crass without any sign of rich culture and that we show no accountability, responsibility, and integrity in our daily lives?

Let’s call spade a spade.

The young generation surfeit with consuming hamburgers, Coke, Levis jeans and Rs. 30,000 mobile phones needs to have access to sexual world and sometimes relieving off the sexual tensions is better than bottling it up to get unexpected results. The laborer who had a hard day working at the coal mine needs some entertainment. The rich VP needs to take away his mind from his monotonous number crunching. All of us (adults) need a dose of pornography once in a while in different degree. Why can’t we just have adult movies screened where only the adults get to pay and watch, or rent out DVDs to those who want to watch it in privacy? Why can’t we have pornographic magazines for sale in sealed envelope sold only to adults? In my opinion, this would actually bring down the sleaze that seems to attack young girls and adult women alike. Child rapes, Old women rapes, and all other woman rapes is quite rampant – it is not reported enough, that’s all! Sexual craving is natural and needs to be relieved. If it is pornography that can do that job, why not?

AIDS is rampant in India and we will soon become the country with maximum HIV patients in the world (or did we already?). Do our people know how it spreads? Do we even know anything about it? Are we taught in schools? Why is it all hush-hush in India? Truck drivers move from city to city, visit prostitutes and keep spreading AIDS like wildfire and the local population who visit the same prostitute contract the disease and bring it home. Instead of curbing prostitution calling it immoral, we should recognize and accept it as ‘history’s oldest profession’ and that it is bound to stay even when you, I and all our grand-grand children are gone. Instead of fighting it, which is impossible, why can’t we just accept it and see how we can regulate it so that AIDS can be checked and controlled, so that prostitutes get access to hospitals and good treatment?

What’s with banning Playboy magazine when Internet provides all the access to internet surfing generation? What’s with banning adult movies when every music video seems to beam sleaze and soft pornography into all middle-class homes during primetime? What is moral policing? Who are they? Why do we need them?

What happened to Kama Sutra? Why are our temples adorned with fornicating gods in various positions while we don’t get to paint a nude goddess? Why are our ancient scriptures full of descriptions of lust, sex and eroticism while we don’t get to write any? How come we get to be Victorian when England itself has already renounced it?

I say, ‘Welcome Pornography! Come back to the land of Kama Sutra’ and bring back the Golden Age!!

7 comments:

  1. We must be the worlds biggest hipocrites when it comes to sex. Our culture is filled with sexual innuendos but we put up this prude facade!

    It would really take a long time for things to turn around once again. Or shock therapy. Something like Ash doing a Basic Instinct.

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  2. It would be interesting to study how these social changes take place. I read in "Castes of Mind" by Nicholas Dirks that there were divorces and remarriages of widows in temples during the Nayaka period in Tamilnadu. Women were banned from entering the same temples later. During the same period Muddupalani wrote Radhika Santwanam. When Bangalore Nagaranamma reprinted the classic in 1910 reformers like Kandukuri Veeresalingam condemned the book and it was banned by the British in 1911. The ban was revoked only after independence with the support of Tanguturi Prakasam. In the same Tamilnadu, where Muddupalani thrived, we now have Khusboo and others persecuted for their openess. I do not think that Indians are particularly good or bad. If possible, scholars have to study how and why things change and that may help in guarding against this kind of oppressive attitudes.

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  3. it is very correct to say, what this moral policing is?, who is this moral police?, who gave them the right to police others?, what is te definition of morality?, and who defines it ?

    but to say on the whole that we are hypocrites or hiding behind something is not correct.

    as gaddeswarup says, it is exactly true that changes happen with time to time.
    just as we were the land of kamasutra which is a part of the roots of the same culture that we say we belong to then how come the culture is to be blamed. it is exactly that from one era to the other, when there is a power shift then new rules are set and definitions change.

    e.g. if one government comes into power they increase the censordhip on adult content available freely, and then even if the government changes the new power players do not want ( do not consider it important) to change these situations. so the changes can come but only with time and only with once again with these kind of power shifts.

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  4. Well, isnt pornography already there? I mean, go to the video shop, you'll find hundreds of porn videos... if you have access to the internet, then nothing like it... about Playboy, errm well we are the first country to have banned the Satanic Verses... sex is still a taboo... the Hindutva brigade and the Shiv Sena thugs will be out on the streets rioting... whichever govt is ruling, it'll promptly ban Playboy...

    Dont you think there is a level of softporn available in magazines like Swathi in Telugu?

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  5. True, we Indians are being hypocritical where sex is concerned. When a third century Indian could produce the first sex manual Kamasutra, how odd that in the twenty-first century men and women are tightlipped about sex. This is to the detriment of the society. Very soon India will have overtaken South Africa in the number of AIDS/HIV sufferers. No wonder India is on the way to becoming the next AIDS capital of the world. It is already the diabetes capital, believe it or not. Sex education should be imparted at secondary school and college levels, prostitution should be legalized and there should be openness about sex in the society. Sex should not be a taboo subject as it is now. Soft porn is already there in some form in many A and U certificate films. But we hesitate to allow it openly, we drive it underground where it thrives to many people's detriment and to the benefit of policemen and others. Kamasutra is rooted in our culture, it should be given a new definition and shape acceptable to all.

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  6. Yes, you are true. Legalising prostituion, and pronography will bring down the sexual crime. Then you won't have to fight for sexual pleasure or pressurise someone for it. We might have heard innumerable cases of extra marital affairs and every day in the news we hear that the a girl coming from a call centre was raped and murdered. Legalizing prostitution and pronography will to some extent bring down the sexual crimes. For those who read the Freakonomics, they know that the crime rate in USA came down once because of legalizing the abortion in the country. May be this also could help.

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  7. bloody bunch of despos! u cant imagine what porn is doing. masturbation releases sexual tension, but porn increases sexual desires and unleashes the wild side of sexuality whixh turns ou to be dangerous.

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