We are welcoming the valentine week, but lovers will beware with their celebrations as the moral policers will pound couples to teach them lessons of Shistachar and tradition.
It is an irony that a country with the second highest population at 1.2 billion has a taboo of PDA. India is acclaimed the world over for the great sex manual of Kamasutra. The elaborate and enunciated carvings at Khajuraho depict sensual apsaras and their trained tricks.
And yet, the country does not allow kissing in public. It is said that the world is divided into two sorts of societies, the ones that allow kissing in public, and the others that allow pissing in public. It is sad our country with many yellow stained walls, falls in the latter category.
The moral police in India is stronger than the whitewashers of Indian walls.
The provision of the law that the moral police feed on is Section 294 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), which states that “whoever, to the annoyance of others, a) does any obscene act in any public place, or b) sings, recites or utters any obscene songs, ballad or word, in or near any public place, shall be punished with imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to three months, or with fine, or with both.”
What is interesting is that the most critical element of this provision, obscenity, is not defined. Which means that whether or not a couple kissing in a public place is an “obscene act” is entirely a matter of interpretation.
Till few years ago, even movies would replace physical intimacy with quivering flowers and rainfall. And leave the actual act to the imagination of the masses. One wonders how effective this was to keep the public’s mind off obscenity.
Image Credit: Movie – Shree 420, Raaz Reboot
Also, one wonders that if the moral policers were so effective in keeping people’s hand off each other, how were so many babies born? The numbers that India prides as its demographic dividend can also be seen as Indians’ productivity, that has born fruition after a few years.
Even when the present government came to power in 2014, it attempted to ban online pornography. And failed, as in today’s digital world, it is difficult to stop what people click on their personal cell phones. The incognito window has been one of India’s loyal friend.
And who is stopping the Indians from pornography, the law makers? It is not even two years ago, that MLAs in Odisha were suspended from the assembly for watching porn while the house was in session.
In 2014, Kochi saw the Kiss of Love protest. It entailed a kind of direct action against moral policing by kissing in a public place. It attracted about 50-odd men and women, more than 1,000 onlookers, and the gleeful ire of right-wing elements cutting across religious barriers. The protestors were carted off to the police stationand charged with “unlawful assembly” and “disturbing peace” in a public place.
From Love Jihad to V Day vandalism, the goons are having a great time. While the messiahs of love cannot find a safe nook in their own country.
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