Morality and Me

My friend, while defending his stand on 7G, countered my view on voyeurism in that movie. Why didn't you criticise sex in American Beauty and Monster's Ball, your favorite movies? He demanded.

He thought I'm completely against sex and because I've shown my affinity towards BJP in the earlier blogs; he thought I show Sangh Parivarian moralism while commenting about skin shows in the movies. I explained him my stand on that. He jokingly asked why am I not airing such views in my blogs? Because those are the grey areas I was embarassed to talk about? Am I scared because I might offend the 'conservates' reading this blog?

I guess not. Here I go.

I'm not against sex being portrayed in the movies. On the contrary, I'm all for abolishing censorship, legalising pornography and prostitution.

The censor board should be rating the films instead of 'censoring' them. The NFDC, which is draining out taxpayers money, can play an active role in it. In fact, I even have a nice name for such a body. Indian Motion Picture Regulatory Authority (IMRA). They can do what TRAI does to telecom. If any movie is socially offensive, they can take it to court and get it stayed or banned. Also they can educate the public (especially parents) on the ratings scheme. Movie halls should also be rated based on the type of movie they screen. This will discriminate, for example, X rated and U rated halls. This will prevent families from landing up in an X hall. Apart from Bajrang and Shiv saniks protests, this will also cause a lot of chaos initially. But these are the teething troubles that needs to be managed and soon the dust will settle in.

Since there will be a legal outlet for voyeurs, moviemakers such as Mani Ratnam, Varma and Selvaraghan will stop deliberately showing skin in their movies and start making good films.

Porn is an art. There are directors in India who can make good porn films. They will thrive. Porn is a $4 billion industry in US. Imagine such a business here. It will generate huge employment opportunities and any harmless business to generate money is welcome for a poor country like India.

Secondly, legalising prostitution will streamline what is one of the biggest grey market industries in India. Let's face it. Prostitution does exist in India. From politicians to rickshaw-wallah, every one seeks their services. I reckon the Police Department in India must be making some hundreds of crores on bribes from this industry. Instead of cops eating them away, let the sex-workers pay tax and live respectfully. Legalising will provide a great relief to them all and regulating and managing them through licenses will help control AIDS in a big way. Considering the bribery culture here, licensing will not eliminate AIDS totally but the scenario will be much better than it is today.

For some miscued and misplaced reasons, some of you may see these as 'indecent proposals'. Such an attitude has what led a whole society of frustated youth stagnating our growth.

Ironically, we were not such a society before. We had courtesans, drank freely even in the courts of Hindu kings and carved pornographic materials in the temple pillars. I exactly don't know where we lost that lifestyle. Ancient Tamil literatures even refer to living-in relationships. Along with these proposals, I strongly recommend our policy makers and their moral police friends to read them to see where we came in from.

I strongly feel that these reforms are as essential as that of economic.