Can a porn ban possibly stop rape?

Image Credits: Utterly Butterly Delicious- Amul

On December 16th, I was in Abu Dhabi. The incident that occurred in the capital of India was enough to cause ripples across the world to such an extent that Arabic news channels were mentioning it a bit too many times for comfort. Months later, the capital is in the news yet again for another high profile case. This time, however, the victim was an innocent little five year old. Apparently, the two men watched porn clips, before the alcohol fueled attack.

The situation:

The Government is taking the easy way out- ban pornography. Elections are pretty near, and it is time to appeal to the moral values of Indians. Most of the people would love the very idea without identifying what is being done in the process, and vote the same government back to power. Public memory is very short indeed. Remember India losing eight tests in a row? You don't, right?

Banning pornography would be the first step in censorship. What would the difference between us and the Chinese? The Arabs? The Koreans? Before you know it, Facebook is getting banned with the excuse of contradicting traditional Indian values. Blog posts are no longer public without the approval of the government.

Do not make the mistake of believing that this post propagates the idea of pornography- because it doesn't. Pornography is wrong- but so are many other things. That doesn't mean you go on banning everything out there. The fact that we are human beings gives us a choice; a choice to differentiate right from wrong! If we are not given the chance to execute that very choice, mark my words- we would lose that ability someday.

There are many other angles to the recent story. Apparently, the police offered ₹ 2000 to refrain from reporting the incident. Why not ban the police altogether, and put in Army rule then? Alcohol played a big role in the incident too, why not ban alcohol? A police officer also slapped a protester on camera- why not make slapping a non-bailable offence?

Something that the government can do is bring in Islamic laws, and this is not the first time I am advocating that. Why else do you think the crime rate in the middle east is negligible?

The Law:

Wikipedia says:

In India, watching or possessing pornographic materials is legal, but distributing such materials is illegal and banned. Likewise, the publication or production of X-rated materials is also illegal.

A petition has been filed in the Supreme Court by lawyer Kamlesh Vaswani, who wants watching pornography to be made a non-bailable offence. If accepted, you could land in jail for venturing into a site, even unknowingly.

Vasvani's version:

Quoting an article:

Vaswani is in the first camp and cites a grow fascination with pornography. According to Google Trends, in 2012, New Delhi recorded the highest percentage worldwide for the number of times the word "porn" was searched online.

Those who search "porn" in Google are just novices. If you book flight tickets online regularly, you wouldn't search "book flight ticket" in Google every single time, would you? This statistic is highly inaccurate.

Vaswani and his supporters have also been heartened by the fact that Iceland, that bastion of individual freedoms, is planning to limit access to porn because of concern that children's attitudes towards sex and women is being harmed by the hardcore imagery online.

Again, the Iceland version might not hold good for India. If you boast of moral values, why would your children venture into that world in the first place?

Vaswani's petition contains an undeniable truth: India is a society in transition. Semi-educated men from rural areas are flooding into towns and cities in search of work. As men struggle to understand the new social order, the free availability of pornography is warping their views of women.

This is perhaps the most baseless conclusion I have heard all week. Their views on women were 'warped' from the beginning. This might just have amplified the same. Why not target the root cause and not the amplification factor?

The Technical Aspect- how to bypass it?

Rules are meant to be broken- at least that is what the human tendency is. Take marijuana for example. Possession of any amount of marijuana in India is illegal. But does that, in any way, refrain people from using the same. Take a more common example. Piracy is illegal, but if you go to that shop at the corner of your locality and buy a music CD, it's still illegal. Many sites are banned in countries like the UAE. But there are still ways to bypass the block! How do people do it? By using TOR. The power of TOR is such that people use it to access the Deep Web (psst... you can even hire assassins there), something for which you could be hunted by the FBI. What I say is that a ban on websites is fairly easy to bypass, even for a novice! So, what's the point of a ban?

Moral of the story:

My point, simply, is that a ban is not the solution. Try and educate the masses. If you are so proud of your culture and values, why don't you instill the same in your children, rather than saying a stubborn NO? Believe me, with the resources available today, it's just a matter of time before they find a way out- it's just a matter of time... And once they do, you never know what will happen.

Back to those unsolved rape cases, I think the government ought to work more on getting a judgement on them first, rather than burdening the understaffed police with millions of IP address look ups.

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