Is Porn Ban in India Justified?

This article was written by Kartik Aggarwal  a student of Shri Ram College of Commerce

On 9^th July 2015, to everyone’s surprise, the Supreme Court of India said that watching porn in the privacy of a room by an individual doesn’t amount to crime. Chief Justice of India H.L. Dattu stated that the court cannot pass orders to stop adults from watching porn within the four walls of their room as it could be a violation of Article 21 (Right to personal liberty).

A three-judge bench headed by CJI H.L. Dattu while hearing a PIL filed by an Indore-based lawyer for a ban on more than 850 porn sites in the country observed orally that, “Such interim orders cannot be passed by this court. Somebody may come to the court and say look I am above 18 and how can you stop me from watching it within the four walls of my room. It is a violation of Article 21 (right to personal liberty)” and said “It is an issue for the government to deal with. Can we pass an interim order directing blocking of all adult websites? And let us keep in mind the possible contention of a person who could ask what crime have I committed by browsing adult websites in private within the four walls of my house. Could he not argue about his right to freedom to do something within the four walls of his house without violating any law?”  Further, the Union Home Ministry was asked to file a detailed affidavit in four weeks. Centre assured the Supreme Court that all possible measures would be taken to block porn sites, particularly those dealing with child pornography. On July 30^th, the government ordered telecom operators and Internet service providers to ban 857 pornographic websites.

Internet Service Providers also expressed their trepidation, saying that it is virtually impossible to ban porn websites given that servers hosting these websites were outside the country. Moreover, the government list of 857 websites is a very small number as there are millions of porn websites on the web, and number growing day by day. The Indian Computer Emergency Response Team claims that there are more than 40 million porn websites around the world and most of them operate outside India from locations where porn is legal.

The ones, who really want to access porn, can do so using freely available proxy servers and location maskers. For instance, the government’s attempt to ban erotic cartoon character ‘Savitha Bhabhi’ in 2009. Despite the ban order, the cartoon strips were easily available on the web through multiple hosts.

Many Indian porn lovers woke up to a rude shock when porn sites were inaccessible on most ISPs – including Vodafone, MTNL, ACT, Hathway and BSNL. On searching for popular porn sites, all they ended up on were blank pages.

Government’s move to ban pornographic sites was resented and opposed by various people who viewed such ban as breech of their personal freedom. For many, these moves threaten India’s democracy and tradition of cultural pluralism. It has also sparked outrage on social media like twitter, facebook, etc. Some sections of people even protested against such step as a result of which the government had to give in and on 4^th August 2015, said that the ban was an attempt to curb child pornography and the ban would only be applicable to sites that had children indulging in pornographic acts.

Falling to the misconceptions that watching porn has been the cause of sexual violence against women in India should not form the basis of banning porn sites. Moreover there isn’t any study that proves the above fact. To the contrary, around 30% of women around globe watch porn as well. Section 292 of the Indian Penal Code, which came about by Act 36 of 1969, watching or possessing pornographic materials is legal, but distributing such materials is illegal and banned.

Though Indian government considers porn to be anti-social and also a means of spreading anti-social activities, but trying to ban porn in India is futile, given its popularity, especially among the youth. The ban on online porn in this era is antiquated. It is rightly said, “The more one tries to ban something, more it goes viral”. Moreover Indians always have a way out for anything and everything. By banning porn, all we are doing is teaching generations how to hide IP addresses and pushing them to use the Dark Web. 

For the timing, the move to ban porn has boomeranged, thus, forcing the government to come out and say that it supports freedom of communication. So, now Indians can return to watch porn sites to fulfill their sexual satisfaction.