A leading Indian daily declared in its headline Monday that aside from Maggi, the government has now imposed a ban on pornography. Indeed, as early as Saturday, Indian Internet users were stumped to find only a blank page when they tried to access their favorite porn websites. Naturally, it sparked furor and concern, as local media reports indicated.
With an order from the government, Indian Internet service providers began blocking at least 857 porn sites beginning last weekend. The move was sparked by Supreme Court criticism this month, citing the government's inability to ban pornographic websites, according to BBC News. In response, the government began the crackdown with letters requesting Internet providers to enforce the ban immediately. The country's Information Technology secretary added that they were acting under court directives, The Verge reported.
Aside from the outrage generated by the ban, a debate is now raging across India and social media addressing the legitimacy of the crackdown. The government maintains that the ban will not remain indefinitely and that it was aimed at regulating access to child pornography. The Indian public is, however, not mollified.
"It's a proven fact by international surveys that instead of fueling sexual crimes, porn actually provides safer outlet for sexual repression," said Bollywood filmmaker Ram Gopal Varma according to the Hollywood Reporter.
Even legal experts were outraged.
"There is no proper justification that they have given for banning all porn, rather than child porn or revenge porn or something like that," Pranesh Prakash, from Centre for Internet and Society, told The Financial Times.
A survey by adult website Pornhub places Indians as the fourth source of porn traffic behind the U.S., U.K. and Canada. This is highlighted by the number of Internet users in India. There are 280 million Indians who had access to the Internet as of 2014 and it is expected to grow by as much as 640 million in 2019, The Hollywood Reported noted.
