During the last week, some famous and infamous people were in Goa. I refer to Poonam Pandey and Milind Soman. I will leave it to you to figure out who qualifies as which.
We all know Goa to be a place where people go to shed their worries and relax. Poonam Pandey and Milind Soman, both went few steps ahead and shed their clothes too– in a public place and on camera.
The locals immediately objected to Poonam Pandey’s actions. They filed complaints against her with the Goa Police. Soon after, the Police booked and arrested Pandey for obscenity.
But implicating Milind Soman took some nudging from an overzealous social media. Twitter did its part by duly pointing out the ‘inequality’ in the treatment of Pandey and Soman. One ‘Goa Suraksha Manch’ finally took the cue. They complained that Soman too had projected ‘Goa’s image’ in a bad way like Poonam Pandey. As a result, the Goa Police filed an FIR against Milind Soman too.
But why do I call the social media ‘overzealous’, you ask? Because the Goa Police did not actually file any of the FIRs for the image of Goa having been sullied. One cannot defame a place under Indian law. The Police did not even file the FIRs for ‘nudity’. Contrary to the popular view, nudity by itself is not an offence under Indian law. The Police had filed the FIRs for obscenity. And so, social media needed to first be sure that Soman had committed obscenity under Indian law.
The law on obscenity
FIRs against both Pandey and Soman are primarily based on provisions under two laws. The Indian Penal Code, 1860 (“IPC”), and the Information Technology Act, 2000 (the “IT Act”). The IT Act is invoked too because the photograph and video were published in electronic form. The Police have charged Poonam Pandey under another law. Namely, the Indecent Representation of Women (Prohibition) Act, 1986. Provisions of this law obviously are not applicable to Milind Soman.
Under the IPC and IT Act, ‘obscene material’ is material:
- which is ‘lascivious’ or ‘appeals to the prurient interest’; or
- whose effect is to tend to ‘deprave and corrupt’ the likely audience; or
- which contains ‘sexually explicit act or conduct’.
Let’s look at the meanings of some of the uncommon words used in these provisions, as per the Oxford Dictionary:
- Lascivious– feeling or revealing an overt sexual interest or desire.
- Prurient– encouraging an excessive interest in sexual matters, especially the sexual activity of others.
- Deprave– make (someone) immoral or wicked.
As is evident, none of these provisions make the mere act of going nude an offence. The nudity must be of a certain nature for these provisions to cover it. It has to at least have a sexual overtone, or be capable of corrupting someone morally.
I doubt if Soman sprinting on a beach without clothes can evoke sexual interest. Or corrupt anyone’s mind to commit immorality. And no, emulating Soman’s particular behaviour itself cannot be called immorality. It may be distasteful for you or me to see, but it isn’t ‘immoral’. Else, we wouldn’t be revering Jain saints who lead their entire lives without clothes. Would we?
Discrimination against Poonam Pandey or victimization of Milind Soman?
A lot of the outrage about unequal treatment of the two cases comes from a mistaken belief. The belief being that the nudity in Pandey’s video led to her arrest. Or that ‘nudity’ is the same as ‘obscenity’ under law.
But in fact, this is what the Supreme Court of India has had to say about obscenity vis-a-vis the picture of a nude woman:
A picture of a nude/semi-nude woman, as such, cannot per se be called obscene unless it has the tendency to arouse feeling or revealing an overt sexual desire. The picture should be suggestive of deprave[d] mind and designed to excite sexual passion in persons who are likely to see it, which will depend on the particular posture and the background in which the nude/semi-nude woman is depicted. Only those sex-related materials which have a tendency of “exciting lustful thoughts” can be held to be obscene, but the obscenity has to be judged from the point of view of an average person, by applying contemporary community standards.
For the unversed, let me just say that Pandey’s video wasn’t simply nudity. For the question of why the law prohibits even the likes of her video, the answer calls for a separate blog post.
The question facing us now is this. Was it inequality when the Police had not filed any FIR against Milind Soman? Or is it now, when they have filed an FIR for obscenity despite the legal position?
And questions remain
I am all for gender equality. But is it okay to arbitrarily interpret the law to serve a popular perception of equality? Is it okay to baselessly persecute men to serve such equality to women? Do women even need that kind of equality? And will this not harm the real cause of gender equality for women?
The charge and the law cannot be different for the same act. But the question is why should anyone publicise acts which should be private moments. It does influence the impressionable young ones, the teens, to follow in their footsteps, ultimately getting trapped by unscrupulous elements into being blackmailed eventually leading to disaster. Majority in this country are still very conservative and such things have ruined many a family.
Gender equality aside we need to seriously decide what social values we need. Is nudity all that important?
The thing is that social values is not a homogeneous concept even within our country. And if one’s values doesn’t match ours, we are not in a position to impose our values on them. So long as they are within the boundaries of the ‘legal’, it becomes illegal for anyone to stop them. That I guess is what the framers of our Constitution envisaged when they provided us all with the freedom of expression.