The media was abuzz last week with news of a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) filed by a certain Mr. Kamlesh Vaswani in the Honorable Supreme Court, asking for a blanket ban on freely available pornographic content. This basically means that if the SC passes a verdict in its favour, watching porn in India will become a criminal offence. Even though the premise behind the litigant's concern is based on shaky ground and I personally do not endorse it, the fact that I share my surname with him, has invited considerable ridicule from friends. I apologize to all those whose sentiments have been hurt. To compensate for this, here are some quick tips on using proxy settings on your browser, just in case!
The basic argument that Mr. Vaswani has cited in his PIL, is that watching porn leads to increased incidents of sex crimes against women. What added fuel to the fire was that the accused in the brutal rape of a 5-year old in Delhi allegedly admitted to consuming pornographic content minutes before abducting the victim. But to jump the gun and completely ban access to adult content is like resigning to ideas such as "Ban Times Now because watching NewsHour leads to marital discord."
Though I may not be an expert on the issue, I personally feel that depriving responsible adults of adult entertainment could do more harm than good. I'm not sure how many molesters and rapists are actually inspired by porn to commit the horrendous crimes that are being reported by the media ever so frequently these days, but common sense tells me that miscreants will always find means to access material that is legally prohibited. After all, human curiosity is always attracted by the unattainable.
Image credit: BoyGeniusReport
Though I may not be an expert on the issue, I personally feel that depriving responsible adults of adult entertainment could do more harm than good. I'm not sure how many molesters and rapists are actually inspired by porn to commit the horrendous crimes that are being reported by the media ever so frequently these days, but common sense tells me that miscreants will always find means to access material that is legally prohibited. After all, human curiosity is always attracted by the unattainable.
Image credit: BoyGeniusReport
