Porn star Sunny Leone may have made news ever since she entered as a contestant on Bigg Boss but, quite surprisingly, her presence in the mainstream media has not led to the kind of debate that her credentials make necessary.
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| Sunny Leone, an Indo-canadian porn star, who made controversial appearance on Indian reality show Bigg Boss will next appear in bollywood movie Jism 2,
currently being shot in Sri Lanka |
So, even as the Indian masses seem to have accepted her and she is all set to star in a Mahesh Bhatt film, we are yet to hear much on what this reflects of us a society and what this has to say about the law as it stands today.
On the one hand, in an indication of how Indians, particularly the youth, take pornography in the age of liberalisation, Sunny Leone is one of the most googled individuals on the Internet.
On the other hand, Indian laws continue to preach Victorian values.
Section 292 of the Indian Penal Code describes something as obscene if its effect is 'such as to tend to deprave and corrupt persons who are likely, …, to read, see or hear' it. In fact, the obscenity law in India could well cause Ms Leone trouble if charges were to be filed against her.
The obscenity law has its basis in the Hicklin Test, laid down in England nearly one and a half centuries ago.
Not only is its definition of what is obscene an anachronism in today's context, it is too vague and undefined to deserve a place in the statute books.
In the United States only sexually explicit material of the extreme kind is deemed as obscene, the interpretation of the law has been fairly liberal in the Uk. In hypocritical India, however, the situation is such that any person can get a writer, painter or movie maker booked for what she in her subjective appreciation deems as obscene.
Pornography is a no-no as far as the law is concerned, even though the Internet is flooded with sexually explicit material and the 'Blue Film' market flourishes underground.
When the law ignores what common people deem as proper, it is not going to be followed and ndian law has also failed to recognise that what people consider obscene changes over time.
There is no reason why the tastes of the young India should be ignored as long as suitable safeguards exist for children and the mainstream media and public places do not contain or display material that would be thought offensive by most people.
© Daily Mail, London |
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