Dear Government, Hands Off My Porn: Shobhaa De

mangaloretoday.com

Mumbai, Aug 03: The barely there fig-leaf over the government’s ’progressive thinking’, wilted miserably and fell off like an unused condom. There was a limp attempt to back track on the porn ban... but by then, India had drubbed those holier-than-thou fellows in Delhi and forced them to retreat. It was almost unanimously agreed that the clumsy move to ban 857 "offensive" sites was as unsatisfying to both parties as coitus interruptus during a ’suhaag raat’.

 

Personally speaking, I was irritated enough by the government’s hypocrisy to start boasting about my own credentials! Remember the famous ’porn writer’ tag? I am now wearing it like a badge of honour! When I tweeted about the proposed ban, I expected the trolls to have a field day - and predictably enough, they did exactly that. "How will she sell her books now?" someone wondered. Like I have always sold them - through bookshops!

Ditto for the question - "How will we watch adult channels now?" Like before! Same to same...

Come on, even if 8, 857 or 80,857 sites are blocked, ’porn’ (unimaginative word!) won’t disappear. And Indians are unlikely to wake up purified and sanitised one fine morning saying, "Oh God! What a relief ! No more gandi gandi baatein, gandi gandi images.

Thank you, Government for saving our souls! Thank you for keeping us out of purgatory! Thank you for purging us."

 

That still won’t take care of Asaram.

That’s the problem.

We can all bathe in Dettol every morning. And we can white wash our sins. Our mouths can be rinsed with boric acid.... but who can get inside the minds and hearts of a billion plus people and stop their sexual fantasies?

This is just too absurd. In fact, it is embarrassingly jejune. Had it been just this nonsense about blocking adult content sites, one would be tempted to say, "Jaaney do. These people have no better kaam dhanda... they’ve probably never had inspiring sex in their lives..." But the purpose behind this move seems to be kuch aur. It has a twisted political agenda that makes S and M look cute.

In a country where an alleged rapist (Asaram) appears in textbooks as a saint, along with some of India’s most prominent philosophers and thinkers, the government’s efforts to curtail basic freedoms, appears almost perverse.

If it starts here, goes unchallenged, is pushed through adopting familiar draconian ways to ’punish’ offenders, where does it stop? Will those parliamentarians caught on camera happily enjoying porn while the future of the nation is being debated, get arrested for breaking the law? Why not start with them? Why not set a good example? Unko pakdo, Sirji!

Private pleasures are the prerogative of each and every citizen of the world. There’s nothing official about it. It’s nobody’s bloody business. Governments should never intrude into that space! Hands off (pun intended!), Sirji. 

Before we get to that (and can we blame those parliamentarians for distracting themselves with hot stuff, given the dead boring quality of parliamentary debates?), we need to ask a basic question - crude as it is: what’s worse - shagging in private or slagging off in public?

Any answers, Sirji?

(Shobhaa De is an established writer, columnist, opinion shaper and social commentator, who is considered an authority on popular culture.)