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Is Sexuality Anti Indian Reflections On Obscenity in Contemporary Indian Popular Discourse
Is Sexuality Anti Indian Reflections On Obscenity in Contemporary Indian Popular Discourse
Is Sexuality Anti-Indian?
Reflections on Obscenity in Contemporary
Indian Popular Discourse
Fritzi-Marie Titzmann
Introduction
In the era of globalisation, post-liberalisation India witnesses a simultaneous
increase in sexually explicit media representations and liberalising norms of
conduct for men and women (at least in urban settings). Yet at the same time, the
rise of the Hindu right has spurred a politicisation of the connection of ‘Indian
culture’, morality and decency against alleged obscenity. From the early 1990s
onwards, controversies around film songs like ‘Choli ke piche kya hai’, films such
as Bandit Queen (1994) and Fire (1998), the Miss World pageant in Bangalore in
1998, M. F. Husain’s nude paintings of Hindu goddesses1 or repeated agitation
against Valentine’s Day celebrations—such as the 2005 attacks in Meerut parks
on couples2—have brought the debate about obscenity repeatedly on the agenda.
Research in this field shows that the key issue is not simply the censorship of
images themselves but also the question of audiences: must they be protected
because of what they understand, what they feel or what they might imagine?3
Obscenity and discourses of nationalism are entangled in varied ways. Within
the Hindu-nationalist rhetoric, obscenity, constructed in opposition to morality
and sexual purity, is closely tied to notions of nationalism as the ‘forbidden’ that
1
T. Guha-Thakurta, Monuments, Objects, Histories: Institutions of Art in Colonial and Postcolonial
India (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004), 245.
2
C. Brosius, ‘Love Attacks: Romance and Media Voyeurism in the Public Domain’ in S. Srivastava
(ed.), Sexuality Studies (New Delhi, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 255–86, 266.
3
W. Mazzarella, Censorium: Cinema and the Open Edge of Mass Publicity (Durham, London: Duke
University Press, 2013).
https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108991735.006 Published online by Cambridge University Press
90 Fritzi-Marie Titzmann
but scholarship has demonstrated that their enactment in the form of censorship
increases in times of political contestation over national culture and rising
nationalism. Gupta has exemplified this for late colonial north India.9 Thus, the
law can be misused in order to suppress dissent as well as to sustain discrimination,
stereotypes and, eventually, inequality. As Kapur argues, Indian laws regulating
sexuality are based on a paternalistic approach, especially towards women, and, thus,
perpetuate patriarchal structures.10 Media, as this chapter attempts to illustrate,
reflects, renegotiates and influences prevailing social structures. Hence, discussions
over the ‘right’ Indian approach to sexuality, the existent laws and the correct or
wrong application of these laws in terms of censorship, surveillance or the demand
for banning certain activities are important sources in order to unravel the complex
underlying dynamics.
While previous research has explored the legal aspects of obscenity, popular
discourses remain underexplored, although they accommodate the entire spectrum
of the ideological debate and frequently comment on forces that give sustenance to
an unequal social system based on patriarchal structures and sexual negativity. This
chapter attempts a contribution towards filling this gap by accessing exemplary
popular discourses through the lens of new media. It does so by setting the
discussions around two discursive events against the backdrop of legal regulations
of obscenity in India. The first guiding question hereby is how understandings of
obscenity in legal discourses differ from those in popular discourses. Second, this
chapter explores how in popular discourse both sides of the spectrum in order
to legitimise their views on sexuality invoke nationalism and cultural arguments.
Third, I suggest that notions of obscenity in India are highly gendered. This may
be largely attributed to an overarching patriarchal social framework, but this
assumption is further supported by the observation that the idea of female purity
takes a central position in Indian nationalist discourse and is often understood as
analogous to the purity of the nation.11
9
C. Gupta, Sexuality, Obscenity, Community: Women, Muslims, and the Hindu Public in Colonial India
(New York: Palgrave, 2002).
10
R. Kapur, ‘The Prurient Postcolonial: The Legal Regulation of Sexual Speech’, in B. Bose and
S. Bhattacharyya (eds), The Phobic and the Erotic: The Politics of Sexualities in Contemporary India
(London, New York: Seagull, 2007), 235–54; R. Kapur, Erotic Justice. Law and the New Politics of
Postcolonialism (London, New York: Routledge, 2005).
11
P. Chatterjee, ‘The Nationalist Resolution of the Women’s Question’, in Kumkum Sangari and
Sudesh Vaid (eds), Recasting Women. Essays in Indian Colonial History (New Brunswick, NJ:
Rutgers University Press, 1999), 233–53; Gupta, Sexuality, Obscenity, Community; K. Poggendorf-
Kakar, ‘Virtuous Mother, Virile Hero and Warrior Queen: The Conception of Gender and Family
in Hindutva’, in M. Pernau, I. Ahmad and H. Reifeld (eds), Family and Gender: Changing Values in
Germany and India (New Delhi: Sage Publications, 2003), 179–95.
12
S. Schäfer, ‘Expanding the Toolbox: Discourse Analysis and Area Studies’, in N.-C. Schneider and
B. Gräf (eds), Social Dynamics 2.0: Researching Change in Times of Media Convergence—Case Studies
from the Middle East and Asia (Berlin: Frank & Timme, 2011), 145–64, 149 (emphasis in original).
13
Schäfer, ‘Expanding the Toolbox’.
The sheer amount of relevant digital media content referring to the two discursive
events presented severe methodological challenges. Without software-supported
big data analysis, it is impossible to include all relevant social media postings into
a qualitative analysis. Even social media big data analyses face persistent issues,
including the prevalence of single platform studies (that is, Twitter), which overlook
the wider social ecology of interaction and diffusion, vague sampling frames,
the socio-cultural complexity of user behaviour and the interplay of online and
offline activities.14 My analysis does not completely transcend these limitations.
For instance, an initial attempt of sampling by the hashtag #pornban for the
period between 31 July and 7 August 2015 produced innumerable related tweets
in random order, so I chose to include only retweeted tweets, assuming their wider
circulation. The major source for the porn ban case are these tweets and additional
blog posts, whereas the Aksa Beach hotel raid case is analysed along online news
reports, blog entries and, in particular, all (50) reader comments to a paradigmatic
mid-day.com news report.15 Hence, my analysis of social media discourse fragments
attempts to avoid the mentioned pitfalls but does not claim to be comprehensive
and rather offers exemplary insights into the discussion.
Hindu family’.23 Following this logic, kissing in public or allegedly obscene media
representations are constructed in opposition to an imagined Indian morality
and sexual purity. Here, we arrive again at the triangle of morality, family and
nationalism, from where I derive my basic assumption: what is labelled as obscene
and immoral is constructed as anti-family, and anti-family is equated with anti-
national. Hence, things and acts considered obscene are ‘forbidden’ because of
several reasons: they threaten ‘culture’ and the nation, and cause overall harm.
Censorship laws reflect deeply rooted anxieties, particularly related to incitement
of communal violence and triggering sexual violence. Whether it is a colonial
hangover or the paternalistic attitude of the Indian elite as well as the state—or
both—Indian masses are labelled as immature audiences that need to be guided,
regulated and protected from harm. ‘It is the masses that are objects […] of the
process of modernisation. And it is the masses that may most typically be injured
or misled by provocative, obscene, or seditious public communications.’24 Again,
anti-nationalism in the form of sedition presents an exceptionally severe offence.
A Human Rights Watch report on the suppression of dissent in India states,
23
Ibid., 86.
24
W. Mazzarella and R. Kaur, ‘Between Sedition and Seduction: Thinking Censorship in South
Asia’, in R. Kaur and W. Mazzarella (eds), Censorship in South Asia. Cultural Regulation from
Sedition to Seduction (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009), 1–28, 20.
25
Human Rights Watch, ‘Stifling Dissent: The Criminalization of Peaceful Expression in India’,
updated 24 May 2016, available at https://www.hrw.org/report/2016/05/24/stifling-dissent/crim-
inalization-peaceful-expression-india, accessed 16 July 2018.
26
Mazzarella and Kaur, ‘Between Sedition and Seduction’, 14.
27
Gupta, Sexuality, Obscenity, Community, 26.
28
Ibid., 40.
29
M. E. John and S. Deshpande, ‘Emptying the Idea of India’, The Hindu, 2 March 2016,
available at https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/emptying-the-idea-of-india/article8300779.
ece, accessed 2 July 2018.
30
Mazzarella’s in-depth analysis of film censorship encompasses two critical moments of moral
panic in modern India: the early era of Indian cinema in the 1910s and 1920s, and the influx of
provocative images with the advent of globalisation in 1990s post-liberalisation India, which sees
a simultaneous rise of the Hindu right. See Mazzarella, Censorium.
31
John and Deshpande, ‘Emptying the Idea of India’.
Today, most countries regulate or ban obscene material through criminal law.33
Other mechanisms include regulation through customs, postal service and
certification for movies or stage performances (as is the case in India and Germany).
Countries that enact Sharia law (such as Saudi Arabia and Iran) have special
religious agencies monitoring possible obscenities.34
Past instances in Great Britain where material was prohibited as obscene
or pornographic for the first time by the Obscene Publications Act of 1857
influenced the current legal framework in India. A legal definition of obscenity
was subsequently established in Britain with the Hicklin legal test (1868), in which
the Court of Queen’s Bench35 held that obscene material is marked by a tendency
‘to deprave and corrupt those whose minds are open to such immoral influences
and into whose hands a publication of this sort may fall’.36 The ruling made it
possible to label a work obscene not based on the intended readership but on how
it might influence society (particularly women and children). This perspective later
formed the basis of anti-obscenity laws in legal systems in the British Empire.
In the late nineteenth century, obscenity was introduced as an offence under the
British colonial regime and three sections were included into the Indian Penal
Code (IPC).37 Having undergone minor amendments, these sections continue to
exist until today and concern any visual or written material that is ‘lascivious or
appealed to the prurient interest’ or which has the ‘effect of depraving or corrupting
[the] person exposed to [it]’.38
32
J. P. Jenkins, ‘Obscenity’, in Encyclopædia Britannica Online, available at https://www.britannica.
com/topic/obscenity, accessed 11 August 2016.
33
I. Jaising, ‘Obscenity: The Use and Abuse of the Law’, in B. Bose (ed.), Gender and Censorship
(New Delhi: Women Unlimited and Kali for Women, 2006), 116–26, 124.
34
Jenkins, ‘Obscenity’.
35
The Court of King’s Bench (or Court of Queen’s Bench during the reign of a female monarch)
was an English court of common law in the English legal system.
36
Jenkins, ‘Obscenity’.
37
The Indian Penal Code, s. 292 (obscene publications); The Indian Penal Code, s. 293 (sale of
obscene objects to young persons); The Indian Penal Code, s. 294 (obscene acts and songs).
38
Gupta, Sexuality, Obscenity, Community, 30.
Prior to the introduction of the IRWA in 1986,44 Anklesaria had argued that
‘[b]esides undermining the woman viewer or reader’s self-esteem, the debasing of
women into sex objects results in obscenity spilling over from the screen or book into
reality, and in the perpetration of crimes like bride burning, sexual harassment and
rape’.45 She, thus, takes a stance similar to the anti-porn feminism of Dworkin and
MacKinnon and strongly condemns the portrayal of women as objects and subjecting
them to demeaning and exploitative expression. In order to prevent gender violence
and negative repercussions on women, she suggests monitoring media without
supporting a negative view on sex in general.46 Eventually, the IRWA was introduced
into Indian law to ensure that women are not depicted in denigrating or derogatory
ways. The IRWA was partly the result of feminist lobbying. It prohibits indecency
that depraves or corrupts public morality. Jaising criticises that the definition in the
bill confuses the separate concepts of indecency and obscenity:
The Indian IRWA illustrates that despite efforts at regulation, the term ‘obscenity’
itself remains vague and gendered, as there is no comparable law that aims to protect
men or sexual minorities from discrimination. The gendered nature of obscenity
regulations is a worldwide reality. Existent laws do not target only pornography. In
India, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) working on AIDS programmes
were repeatedly accused of spreading immorality and pornography and social
workers were charged under obscenity and indecency provisions of the IPC and
the IRWA.48
Several case studies on Indian controversies suggest that concepts of vulgarity
and obscenity change with historical contexts and under different political
44
The Indecent Representation of Women (Prohibition) Act, 1986.
45
S. Anklesaria, ‘Obscenity, Media and the Law’, in B. Bose (ed.), Gender and Censorship (New Delhi:
Women Unlimited and Kali for Women, 2006), 49–55, 49.
46
Ibid., 50.
47
Jaising, ‘Obscenity’, 116.
48
Kapur, Erotic Justice, 75, 80.
53
Malhotra, ‘Porn, Law, Video and Technology’, 42.
54
Ibid.
55
J. Anwer, ‘Pornhub Says India Improves Its Porn Watching Ranking, Now on 3rd Spot’, India
Today, 13 January 2016, available at https://www.indiatoday.in/technology/news/story/pornhub-
says-india-improves-its-porn-watching-ranking-now-on-3rd-spot-303620-2016-01-13,
accessed 9 July 2018.
56
The Information Technology Act, 2000, s. 79(3)(b).
57
The Constitution of India, 1949, article 19.
Hence, the circular is not a blocking order, such as section 69A of the IT Act,58 and
requires justification for blocking access to internet content on grounds of national
security. The IT Act’s grounds for blocking do not include indecency or immorality,
while ISPs are intermediaries, generally known for being over-complying with
government directives. In short, the so-called porn ban did not consist in a direct
governmental ban but a demand for blocking access that the ISPs were overly
enthusiastic to enforce. The move follows from a public interest litigation (PIL)
filed in 2013 by Kamlesh Vaswani, currently being heard by the Supreme Court,
demanding changes to the IT Act and directions for a separate law on pornography
as well as directions to the government to treat the watching and sharing of
pornographic videos as non-bailable and cognisable offences.59 Currently, the mere
consumption of pornography is legal; only the circulation is punishable under the
IPC. In July 2015, in response to a PIL petition by Kamlesh Vashwani from August
2014, the Supreme Court had repudiated banning porn and argued that harmful
content depicting exploitation or non-consensuality, notably child pornography, is
universally condemned and already addressed by the Indian IT Act. With regard to
the porn ban, Liang argues that DeitY lists randomly compiled websites and outlaws
them on grounds of decency and morality, which refers rather to ‘moral paternalism’
than to protecting minors or national security.60
The story of the temporary porn ban made a remarkable turn after users started
to note the ban. That Sunday morning, 2 August, the hashtag #pornban became
a top Twitter trend within hours. The conversation on Twitter was divergent—
some supported the blocking and others ridiculed and criticised the step. It was
ironically called a ‘gift to the nation’ (Figure 5.1), and repeated references were
made to the Kama Sutra and Khajuraho (Figure 5.2) as ‘Indian culture’, thereby
playing with the notions of Indianness and nationalism as opposed to the obscenity
of pornography. Overall, the issue was treated as a national concern, irrespective of
whether one does or does not watch pornography. Accessing pornography turned
into the measuring point for freedom of speech and a transnational cross-media
conversation emerged uniting Indian porn defenders in a kind of temporary ‘ritual
community’.61 An exemplary tweet points out the irony of this sudden democratic
upsurge: ‘Indians divided by religion, united by porn’ (Figure 5.3).
58
The Information Technology Act, 2000, s. 69A.
59
V. Pazhanganat, ‘Husband’s Porn Addiction Causes Wife to Move Supreme Court for Complete
Ban on Pornography’, The Indian Jurist, 15 February 2018, available at https://theindianjurist.
com/2018/02/15/husbands-porn-addiction-causes-wife-move-supreme-court-complete-ban-
pornography/, accessed 10 July 2018.
60
Liang, ‘What Do We Talk about When We Talk about Pornography’.
61
D. Dayan and E. Katz, Media Events: the Live Broadcasting of History (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1992).
https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108991735.006 Published online by Cambridge University Press
Is Sexuality Anti-Indian? 103
vigorous, had worked itself into a state of remarkable frenzy.’63 Linking the
porn ban to preceding censorship controversies like the banning of Wendy
Doniger’s book The Hindus, the film Fire and political defamation cases against
novelists Salman Rushdie and Javier Moros, the article concludes, ‘This is the
first important tenet of censorship in India: life choices that do not fall in
line with the censor’s own worldview are quickly branded “anti-social” or […]
“anti-national”.’64
Commentators repeatedly brought forward the Supreme Court’s engagement
with the question of whether a person browsing pornographic websites within the
four walls of his or her home is committing any offence or whether banning web
access is a violation of article 21 of the Constitution,65 the right to personal liberty.66
Summarising the debate on Global Voices, an international and multilingual
blogging and journalism community, a blogger writes: ‘The never-ending debate
continues, with some arguing that adult citizens should be given freedom of choice,
while others argue that the objectionable adult content on these web sites is having
an adverse impact on Indian society and culture.’67
The advocates of the porn ban use a familiar rhetoric of legitimation, mixing
national concerns with human rights language in terms of gender discrimination and
child rights. For example, a Twitter account called @FilterNet posts strongly against
pornography and takes an adamant stand excluding pornography from the right to
freedom of speech (Figure 5.4). The account’s self-description states in Hindi:
(On the net there are crores of porn/blue film sites. Children can become
their victims. Amongst porn victims, India is ranked 3rd in the world, of that
25% are girls.)68
63
A. Mani Jha and R. Barman, ‘How Young Indians Are Growing Up Censored and Silenced’,
DailyO, 18 July 2017, available at https://www.dailyo.in/arts/censorship-laws-india-sedition-
wendy-doniger-bjp-free-speech/story/1/18430.html, accessed 12 July 2018.
64
Ibid.
65
The Constitution of India, 1949, article 21.
66
A. Saha, ‘Porn Ban Debate: “Is Govt Curbing Our Individual Freedom?”’ Hindustan Times,
3 August 2015, available at https://www.hindustantimes.com/india/porn-ban-debate-is-govt-
curbing-our-individual-freedom/story-43JlWry4Gq60SqUBe0DfwJ.html, accessed 10 July 2018;
U. Anand, ‘Background and Legal Aspects of the Ban on Internet Pornography’, Indian Express,
6 August 2015, available at https://indianexpress.com/article/explained/background-and-legal-
aspects-of-porn-block-on-internet/, accessed 10 July 2018.
67
S. Panigrahi, ‘How India’s Porn Ban Backfired and “Brought the Entire Nation Together”’, Global
Voices, 7 August 2015, available at http://globalvoicesonline.org/2015/08/07/how-indias-porn-
ban-backfired-and-brought-the-entire-nation-together/, accessed 12 July 2018.
68
Translation by author.
https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108991735.006 Published online by Cambridge University Press
Is Sexuality Anti-Indian? 105
The term ‘moral policing’ usually applies to vigilante groups, often hailing from
the Hindutva spectrum—but the Mumbai police has gained a reputation for its
impromptu actions against couples in public space over the recent years, exemplified
by the rough enforcement of the kissing ban on Mumbai’s Marine Drive since
2000. Infamous incidents from other regions in India include the Mangalore pub
attack (2009) and attacks in Meerut parks on couples on Valentine’s Day (2005).
In most prominent cases of moral policing, media surveillance and/or documentation
played a crucial role, be it in the form of threats to expose and compromise couples
by means of YouTube videos, mobile phone pictures or by planned documentation.
In Mangalore, a TV camera team accompanied the mob attacking women in a pub,
which effected an immediate upload of the video recording on YouTube. Brosius
describes this as a ‘[v]oyeuristic form of violence that derives from having power
over another person’s personal sphere’.71
Similar to previous attacks, the incident at Aksa Beach fundamentally stirred
up a debate about public versus private. The general idea is that public intimacy
and especially certain behaviour by women (premarital sex; drinking in the case of
the Mangalore pub attack) is morally wrong, even socially destabilising. Several
authors have noted that displays of affection might be acceptable in certain
‘privatized/modern public spaces’—malls or coffee shops—that are clearly marked
as middle class. However, intimacy in public spaces like parks or beaches renders
less privileged couples more vulnerable and, thus, additionally exposes a classist
division in moral judgment.72 ‘Individual emotions are said to colonize public space
and hurt the sentiments of a moral community […]. Within this interpretation,
pleasure becomes lust and obscenity, and lovers in public become public nuisances
and an insult to conservative moral values.’73
Brosius’ interpretation raises the question of who constitutes the moral
community that dictates what is obscene. Conservative Hindus? The police? The
Indian nation? The Aksa Beach incident poses a peculiar case, as a hotel room
is a private space. Nevertheless, the raid was justified with the persecution of
‘public indecency’, and intimacy between unmarried couples was equated with
acts of immorality and even prostitution. I have pointed out a similar rhetoric in
the context of media representations of live-in couples, where references are made
to ‘hook-ups’, ‘gang-bangs’ and other activities associated with sexual deviance.74
71
Brosius, ‘Love Attacks’, 273.
72
Ibid., 271; S. Phadke, ‘Dangerous Liaisons: Women and Men: Risk and Reputation in Mumbai’,
Economic and Political Weekly 42, no. 17 (2007), 1510–1518, 1514.
73
Brosius, ‘Love Attacks’, 270.
74
F.M. Titzmann, ‘Contesting the Norm? Live-in Relationships in Indian Media Discourses’, South
Asia Multidisciplinary Academic Journal, 16 (2017), available at https://journals.openedition.org/
samaj/4371, accessed 31 July 2018.
https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108991735.006 Published online by Cambridge University Press
Is Sexuality Anti-Indian? 107
The cultural framing refers to notions of respectability and safety. Relating to earlier
allegations of moral policing, the then Commissioner of Police, Rakesh Maria,
stated in a press note: ‘Anti-eve-teasing squads have been made for the safety of
women/girls in crowded places, and especially during the festive season of Ganpati
and Navratri.’75 His justification of public surveillance rests upon the protection
of female respectability and sexual purity. Phadke argues that the discourse of
safety for women is a discourse of sexual safety, and the possible risks to women in
relation to public space include the risk to damaging one’s reputation and to being
blamed.76 Khan recently reaffirmed:
[M]any young women talk of the ‘perceptual maps’ that they carry around
in their heads which help them negotiate public space, not only in terms of
safe-unsafe, but also where they could be seen as ‘respectable’ and where not.
Danger is not just reported incidents of sexual assault, it’s also present in the
perceived threats and fears that dominate a woman’s life.77
Much in line with these discourses, media reported predominantly on the effects
that the Aksa Beach incident had on the affected women. For instance, mid-day.
com reports:
More than 40 couples were rounded up and taken to the police station,
where they were insulted and some of them, especially college students, were
made to call their parents. […] Traumatised by the incident, a 19-year-old
girl told mid-day that she is contemplating committing suicide because of
the stigma and because her parents aren’t talking to her anymore. Another
21-year-old girl, who had gone to a hotel with her fiancé, whom she is
supposed to marry next month, says she was slapped by a female constable
for daring to protest against the action.78
The news report dramatically highlighted negative effects. Verbal insults, physical
violence by the police and, above all, the repeated involvement of the couple’s
parents represent severe threats to the affected. The ‘stigma’ and her family ousting
her caused the suicidal tendency reported by one affected girl. The framing of the
news report reveals the discourses in which the police action is embedded and
75
S. Vaktania, ‘Mumbai Police Not Moral Police, Says Rakesh Maria’, mid-day.com, 18 September
2014, available at https://www.mid-day.com/articles/mumbai-police-not-moral-police-says-
rakesh-maria/15612180, accessed 31 July 2018.
76
Phadke, ‘Dangerous Liasons’, 1511.
77
S. Khan, ‘On India Being Labelled the World’s Most Unsafe Country for Women’, The Hindu,
10 July 2018, available at https://www.thehindu.com/life-and-style/motoring/when-perception-
is-reality/article24379321.ece, accessed 18 July 2018.
78
Devnath, ‘Mumbai: Couples Picked Up From Hotel Rooms’.
through which it receives social legitimation: protecting social norms, family values
and, particularly, a regulation of unmarried women’s behaviour. So-called anti-risk
measures in effect counteract women’s empowerment and might prevent them
from living the way they want. Commissioner Maria’s ‘anti-eve-teasing squads’
then may turn into surveillance tools that could go wrong. The law supports the
dominant sexual ideology and does not protect women’s sexuality when considered
public or deviating from dominant norms, that is, consensual sex outside marriage,
same-sex relations or commercial sex. Hence, marital relationship emerges as the
exclusive site of legitimate sexuality and the core of Indian culture.79
The discussion in the aftermath of the incident showed clearly that the police
action was widely regarded as a violation of fundamental rights and calls became
loud to abolish or rewrite section 110 of the Bombay Police Act, since—like the
obscenity law in the IPC—it does not define what indecency actually is. Among 50
comments posted in response to the mid-day.com news report, only 5 were openly
approving of the police action. The majority of the comments condemned the raid,
particularly its justification of protecting ‘public’ order within the privacy of hotel
rooms. ‘They MUST come out with their definition of “Public places”,’ comments
user Chandan Laxman Gade (13 August 2015).
Another recurrent theme was the linking of moral policing with fundamentalism;
particularly ‘talibanisation’ was repeatedly mentioned.
People who say consentual [sic] sex in hotel rooms is wrong and against Indian
culture, do you even know what true Indian culture is, or was? We Indians
used to be more liberal two thousand years ago. Now we are just a reflection
of Taliban like extremist factions. (Posted by user ‘Shri’, 9 August 2015)
homosexuality has always existed in India; the defenders of personal liberty and
the right to privacy and sexuality employ cultural arguments claiming a liberal
Indian tradition in opposition to Islam. Finally, the allegation of ‘aping Pakistan’
(posted by user pereira, 9 August 2015) is not missing either from the mid-day.com
comments section.
Conclusion
The discursive relationship of obscenity and nationalism plays out in the legal and
popular sphere, but takes on a slightly different form. Nevertheless, a comparison
of these discourses affirms my hypothesis of obscenity being a gendered concept,
an observation that is valid for legal and popular discourse. The gendered
conceptualisation of obscenity is based on cultural and, consequentially, legal
notions of sexuality. A sexphobic nationalist discourse on legislation is deeply rooted
in ‘culture’ and law.82 The legal approach towards sexuality in general and women’s
sexuality in particular is not only informed by sex negativity, but also inherently
paternalistic. The dominant perspective of women as the weaker sex and in need of
protection manifests itself most explicitly in the adoption of the IRWA, which was
introduced to ensure that women are not depicted in denigrating or derogatory ways.
Similar to the anti-pornography argument, the IRWA is based on a protectionist
approach towards women. While feminist advocates based their lobbying on a
language of human rights and attempts to end the objectification of women, the
Hindu-nationalist proponents lobbied for the IRWA in the context of assumed
monolithic cultural codes of sexuality and obscenity in opposition to the
promiscuous West. As a result, the IRWA has led to an increase in censorship,
but it is difficult to distinguish feminist and Hindu-nationalist positions here, as
censorship suppresses all kinds of sexual representations, not just sexist images.83
One eventual outcome is a general suppression of representations of female
sexuality, which, in turn, denies women’s sexual agency.
Popular discourse accommodates a diverse spectrum of opinions and arguments.
Incidents of moral policing show that women are more vulnerable as they are
burdened with greater expectations regarding normative behaviour. The porn
ban generated a discussion on the constitutional right to personal liberty versus
the negative impact of pornography on society, in particular on women and
children. Whereas personal liberty is a non-gendered right—and was defended for
both men and women—advocates of the porn ban use a rhetoric that mixes
nationalism with human rights language in terms of gender discrimination by
82
Kapur, ‘The Prurient Postcolonial’, 242.
83
Ibid., 250.
https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108991735.006 Published online by Cambridge University Press
110 Fritzi-Marie Titzmann
projecting girls as the major victims of porn. In the aftermath of the Aksa Beach
hotel raid, media reported predominantly on the negative effects the raid had on
the affected women. The ensuing debate among internet users pertained to moral
policing, which I have shown as framed in terms of protecting Indian values and,
consequentially, women’s purity by equating safety with surveillance. Given the
wide variation in context, actors and audience, it is difficult to carve out a defined
notion of gender in the analysed fragments of popular discourse. These discourse
fragments nevertheless draw on gendered notions of obscenity, but the analyses
yield rather a wider range of gendered references than a stark distinction from the
legal discourse, as both link the discussion to nationalism and culture.
This chapter further examined whether in the two case studies the allegedly
obscene material or behaviour is constructed as anti-national or anti-Indian. The
result is rather ambiguous. In summary, the Aksa Beach hotel raid incident as well
as the porn ban united citizens and media in favour of free speech and the right to
privacy. The debates intensified by taking place in digital space, thus turning these
incidents into (social) media events. Although the justification of moral policing
and banning porn rests on certain ideas of morality and culturally appropriate
behaviour—which is picked up by the few supportive posts—and it is backed
by respective legal provisions, there was no open accusation of anti-nationalism
anywhere in the official media reports or the reader comments. It is rather the
subtle undertone that reveals anxieties about the family or ‘Indian culture’ being
threatened.
On the other hand, an obvious concern in relation to obscenity is what
contemporary India should be like—to both adversaries and defendants of the
porn ban and moral policing. The rhetoric of legitimisation sounds strangely
alike. In Kapur’s words, ‘[B]oth sides of the debate are draping themselves in
the cultural flag’,84 and culture is invoked to either legitimise or delegitimise
sexual speech, depiction or acts. In this sense, the rhetoric of defending porn or
speaking out against moral policing reveals a vision of what should characterise
the Indian nation: a liberal handling of sexually explicit materials, personal liberty
and freedom of expression. Frequently, this is backed up by a clear rejection of
religious fundamentalism (Hindu or more often Muslim) and claims to globalised
modernity as well as a liberal and tolerant past. Commentators refer to a liberal
sexual past symbolised by the artwork of Khajuraho and the erotic writings in the
Kama Sutra to support these claims. Interestingly, the theme of contagion and
contamination of Indian culture is constantly invoked by all sides. Kapur states
84
Kapur, Erotic Justice, 56.
that arguments around culture are about authenticity and the crucial question of
who constitutes authentic Indianness.85 Do not all sides risk essentialising and
authenticating Indian cultural values as opposed to a postcolonial hybridity, which
conceptually renders ‘uncontaminated values’ impossible?86 Since culture and
sexuality are essentially fluid and shifting categories, the ‘national’ or ‘anti-national’
and obscenity are entangled in complex and multi-layered ways with both concepts
remaining blurry and highly contested.
The discussed examples further show that the obscenity argument (and the
related law) is too often invoked to pursue the interests of certain groups, prohibit
socially deviant behaviour or implement conservative moral rules. Hence, it is
important to keep in mind that many of the controversies around obscenity (in
art, literature, online media or behaviour) are closely connected to the right to
freedom of speech and expression,87 which exists to enable people to question and
challenge dominant social mores. The porn ban was enacted by the employment of
article 19(2), which exempts contents harming ‘morality and decency’ from the
freedom of speech.88 It is my contention that the law is being misused in a way
that gives an unequal system sustenance. As noted earlier, Indian law takes on
a paternalising approach towards women, but there is no law comparable to the
IRWA for men or sexual minorities. Gendered stereotypes of women in need
of protection, of strong men and of non-existent sexual minorities are, hence,
perpetuated. The judiciary and police broadly act along these lines, whereas media
reflect an ongoing multi-faceted debate within Indian society.
In conclusion, the title of this chapter—‘Is Sexuality Anti-Indian?’—has
to be answered with a clear ‘no’ but for this ‘no’ to turn into a discursive reality,
I join Ratna Kapur in her call for sexual representations that do not negate female
or non-heteronormative sexualities and, thus, reflect a positive perspective on
Indian sexualities. In this vision, debates around obscenity will be replaced by
much-needed debates about sexual violence, gender inequality and sexual rights.
85
Ibid., 90.
86
Ibid., 88.
87
The Constitution of India, 1949, article 19(1)(a).
88
The Constitution of India, 1949, article 19(2).