Why a porn ban in India is futile

There was mass hysteria on Saturday night (the day Indians are most active on porn sites, according to Pornhub's survey) as online users in India realised that some of their favourite porn sites were not accessible. This set of a reaction of epic proportions on Twitter and Reddit and had journalists scrambling to see if the sites were indeed inaccessible. Users on Reddit reported that those using service providers like Airtel and Tata Photon faced no problems, but the ones using MTNL, BSNL and ACT ISPs said they were either getting blank pages or messages that said: “The site has been blocked as per the instructions of Competent Authorities.”

According to media reports, the government has asked ISPs to block 857 adult websites. A Livemint report says the order was received by telecom operators on Friday and is likely to be implemented by Monday. The government or the Department of Telecommunications hasn’t officially made a statement yet, but the writing seems to be on the wall. We will no longer be able to watch porn without hiding our IP addresses.

The truth is that trying to ban porn in India is futile, given its immense popularity, even amongst politicians (who can’t seem to wait till they get home to watch it). Not that anything that’s popular should be legal, but the ban on online porn in this day and age is archaic. The closest thing we’ve had to a government stand was in November 2014 when Telecom and IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said: “Although porn is legal in other countries, it needs to be viewed in the context of Indian culture and moral obligation towards society." 

Of course, the sheer scope of banning porn sites is very difficult since it's estimated that there are 40 million porn websites and the manpower needed to monitor this is immense. China, one of the few countries to ban porn, has teams dedicated to track online content.

Porn viewing in India

For most of us (I can only speak for boys, having grown up in a boys boarding school), watching porn was a rite of passage to adulthood, which often went hand in hand with rumours about blindness and hair growth on our palms if we didn’t stop!

In boarding schools, porn would often mean stashed copies of Playboys and Debonairs, which then graduated to entire groups of hormonal boys watching porn together on a small television. In time, cassettes and VCDs would be replaced by grainy mobile clips which would eventually lead to high-resolution online porn with the advent of faster internet connections. Given the paranoia surrounding the effects of pornography on children, most of us grew up fine without any long-term damage.

India's love affair with online porn

An analysis of India's porn-viewing habits by the website Pornhub, showed that Indians are one of the most voluminous consumers of porn in the world. India ranks fourth in the world in visiting this particular website among all the countries in the world. In fact, 49.9% Indians prefer using their mobile phones to access porn, and among Android users, India ranks third after the US and the UK. 

Sunny Leone, despite having quit the adult film industry in 2013, is still the most-searched porn star. In fact, she has been the most searched person on Google in India for the last three years, ahead of Narendra Modi, Salman Khan and every other celebrity!

While the data showed that Rajasthan, Punjab, Jammu and Kashmir, Delhi and North-Eastern states spent more time watching porn, Delhi and Mizoram topped the list with 8 pages per visit! The survey also showed that one in every four visitors is a woman. Interestingly, Saturday was the day most Indians visited porn sites. They were least active on Sundays and on holidays like Diwali, Dusshera, New Year's Eve, Gandhi Jayanti and Muharram.

Note: The data compiled only looks at viewership of Pornhub.com and doesn’t include data from other websites of the Pornhub network.

The desire to ban porn

Despite, the lack of studies to actually establish a causal link between porn and crimes, there is an increased desire to get it banned by some individuals. The social stigma surrounding sex and sexuality in India means that none of our lawmakers, irrespective of their ideology or political leaning, will ever stick up for our right to watch porn.

This followed a petition by lawyer Vijay Panjwani who was representing Kamlesh Vaswani who wanted a ban on all porn sites in India. Speaking to Firstpost, Vaswani said that easily available pornography made him worry about his 10-year-old son. Claiming that the December 2012 Delhi gang-rape had spurred him into action, he said he was encouraged by countries like China and Saudi Arabia who had managed to ban pornography completely. The Chief Justice of India, HL Dattu, however, observed that banning porn was a violation of Article 21 of the Constitution, the right to personal liberty.

Why a ban won't work

If there's one thing the government should have learned from the fiasco surrounding ban on the documentary India's Daughter, it's that the more one tries to ban something, the more it goes viral. The same thing happened with the AIB Knockout video which was taken off YouTube after pressure. The reason for this is a little phenomenon called the Streisand Effect, named after singer Barbara Streisand. In 2003, Streisand attempted to suppress photos of her residence in Malibu but ended up creating public interest around it instead. By banning porn, all we are doing is teaching generations how to hide IP addresses and pushing them to use the Dark Web.