Himadrish Suwan for BeyondHeadlines
Immoral, unethical, heinous, objectification & violation are the first few words that come to my mind when I think of p0rn. Yes, this is as grave a concern to our society as the economy and security are. Today, I’ve taken a stand which is for the topic that there must be a blanket ban on porn across India, and I say that with fullest of my conviction & a conscience that embodies my cultural heritage & the factors responsible for its long survival. To be clear & not taken out of context, I said culture & not religion.
What is p0rn? What exactly is the idea that constitutes porn & who are those people willing to devote their time on porn and how p0rn poses great threat to our moral are some of the few questions I would like to address throughout my allotted time. Rest, the decision is up to the people to take, I can only present my perspective & logical reasoning to back it up.To begin with, I think that “p0rn is a despicable act of human beings of the 21st century to violate human dignity and deprive them of their fair share in the society.” Also, it flourishes on those who are lonely, frustrated, and unhappy with their lives or have just got addicted to it. Addicted? Yes! You heard it right. “Addicted to the shear artificiality, the fantasy, violence & degree of superiority complex involved in the moment.”
It thrives on perverts. People who aren’t well gelled into the practical social life but maybe like spending time alone on the Internet, specifically social media. We can calm down. These are mere symptoms & not generic swooping statement that’s applicable to all. Basically, these are the people who lack peer groups and find it increasingly hard to relate to a certain group of people around them. Yes, we’re social animals & lest we forget that this perverse behavior is here to stay. Porn also is against the very foundational pillars of development as stated by Mr. MJ Akbar. And these are Democracy, Education, Gender Equality & Economic Equity. Porn just violates the 3rd pillar as it not only objectifies human beings but also market it for economic purposes. It’s success depends on more number of people coming in. This is probably why we see lot of porn links embedded someway or the other on various websites we visit on a daily basis. This is an industry, we have to understand that to fight this evil out, we need a collective social resolve for we all are the stake holders of our society, the Indian society.
It is better to be called a “radical conservative” rather being so called “ liberal” because nations morality and public health is at stake and needs attention. Porn and pornography is an ignoble to the society. It is degrading gender relationships and objectifying women leading to sexual assaults on women and increasing rape cases . I am certainly not in favour of complete ban but certainly the reach should be limited.
Not only is it immoral but it as an act of heinous crime to take advantage of somebody’s social & financial depravity in lieu of money for sexual exchange. I out rightly reject this notion & the entire business model working behind this. This shames me as well as the billions of years of earth’s history & evolution. Is the human of 21st so cruel?
Next, we come to what’s the idea behind porn? Who creates it & for whom? Uptill now, we have understood that who the people are more likely to be caught in this trap, now lets talk about who are behind it.
We know world is a place of great economic disproportion. Cutting across continents, countries, states, cities, towns to the villages, this social stigma is a blot on human’s evolution and it exists. But bitter fact, world has always been like this, all along. Economists could explain it better though. Socially underprivileged, poor, peasants, slaves, needy are just few words which describes the variety of reasons as & when people are recruited into this immoral industry. Whereas it was for farming, domestic help, fighters, laborers in the medieval period of slave trading, the same industry has continued till date with a transformation into flesh industry. Do we realize the vultures in the name of humans we’re talking about? And yes, they are better organized than ever. Again, I will not go into the history of slave trade, particularly the Indian sub-continent as I said I won’t talk about religion but culture. The basic idea of operations for such people remains the same, Humans are slaves. My objection is to this basic premise as well. We just can’t divide human beings as mortals & lesser mortals. That’s against the law of nature.
My question is straight to my LEFT leaning friends, many of whom are against porn ban & backers of plethora of Human Rights protests; don’t you see grave Human Rights violation here? Well! If not, let me say this with full responsibility that then you’re a poser and a pseudo intellectual bending according to your needs and wants. For God’s sake, STOP FOOLING PEOPLE!
It’s amazing how we find paradox in our society. The same people who stood together for Nirbhaya are divided when it comes to Porn ban. Pornography in totality is a disgrace to human values, identity, respect & liveliness. And dear o dear, this is not limited merely to exploitation of people’s financial condition but also used as a blackmailing tactic to extort money from the victim. Right after the college to our homes to the TV news, we witness such horrific tales of injustice & degrading values around us daily. “But yes! What can we do? We’re ordinary citizens. Government must do something” This, this same lethargic attitude is killing our souls & conscience daily. We just want somebody to do something, but will never do it ourselves. As Gandhi said once, “Be the change you wish to see in the world.”, but ofcourse, this 2015. Do we even remember the Mahatma? An absolutely immoral & criminal act of forcing people to be performers in an act of porn is heinous crime under our own IPC, yet we see that ever increasing.
Our values have rotten down the ages. Time to re-ignite those flames before it gets too late & we lose all what we fought for. Let’s stand for our fellow humans & try to gaze into their troubled life empathetically; if we could give them few reasons to smile that will be one big achievement for us. Porn affects us & our thinking, lifestyle, behavior, attitude in many different ways. Most are visible unless we ignore to see. As somebody rightly said, common sense is not so common.
It affects our society terribly on a daily basis. From domestic sexual violence to rapes to the organized blackmailing to the exploitation in lieu of sex to objectifying women to the media including movies around us all play their part. It acts as a domino effect in return & engulfs every section of our society irrespective of their region, religion, caste, creed, ideology or demography. Results are uploads, more and more uploads over the internet. The varied stacking of different classes of porn further helped by keywords & Search Engine Optimization basically enhances it’s reach towards it’s target audience itself. A very scary situation for all of us where the product is being pushed at you despite you consciously knowing nothing about it.
I think, this is nothing but oppression around the globe at one place put together. This is probably worse than world’s oldest profession, prostitution itself. This is probably one of the most sadistic networks of depression I’ve ever encountered in my life. All results in degrading human values & cultural freeze. There’s an urgent need to address the revival of the spirit of oneness & gender equality. Only then the economy will be equitable and democracy will triumph in its truest form. Education does play an important role. Not only the primary ones but also sex education in schools so that the new blood of our India is more diversified with opinions, broader in it’s framework, bold in his/her attempts to implement the societal benchmarking standards, sadly which we lack today because our society is too fragmented in the name of religion, caste, creed, politics & identity. And amidst chaos Government of India ended up revealing the names of 856 porn websites that it banned, probably even a quarter of those wouldn’t have been known for if we take one individual at a time.
Writing is on the wall and we must take into cognizance the importance of time where we’re at the helm of changing humanity forever. Let’s talk over the round table & chuck this evil called porn from our lives.
(The Writer views are personal)
