INDO-CANADIAN
porn star, Sunny Leone has happily reinvented herself as a Bollywood actress.
But though her past pursuits have been no barrier, being linked to India's rape
crisis represents a new challenge.
The
31-year-old actress became one of the most searched names on the Internet in
India when she arrived in 2011 to appear in a reality TV series, and has since
taken several raunchy roles in mainstream movies like Jism-2, Shootout At
Wadala, and the upcoming Ragini MMS-2.
But
as India casts around for reasons to explain a series of horrifying sex crimes,
pornography is under scrutiny and has led some to call for Sunny to be jailed.
Recent
events have galvanised anti-porn campaigners after it was revealed that the
suspects in the rape of a five-year-old girl had watched explicit material
before the crime. Aroused by video clips on their mobile phones, they abducted
the girl and drunkenly raped her so violently, she suffered brain injury and
died 11 days after the attack.
"Our
children are accessing more and more graphic and brutal videos and they are imitating
them and we are suffering," says Kamlesh Vaswani, a lawyer who has
petitioned to demand an outright ban on porn. "Our laws are very vague in
this area so it can be corrected in the Supreme Court."
Two
laws already outlaw the distribution or creation of obscene material, with one
act prescribing up to five years in jail for anyone caught publishing
"lascivious" material. But as most of the porn accessed is on sites
outside the jurisdiction of prosecutors and viewed in the privacy of homes or
on mobile phones, convictions are rare and the restrictions are largely
meaningless.
"It
is technically possible to ban it," adds Vaswani, who has a 10-year-old
son in the city of Indore. "They need to have some expert help from the IT
sector."
He
blames Sunny Leone, star of X-rated hits like Sunny's Casting Couch and Sunny's
Slumber Party, for bringing adult material in India to a wider audience.
"She deserves to go to jail if she continues to promote pornography,"
he says.
Appearing
in a recent debate on the Headlines Today news channel, Sunny defended her dual
career as porn star and actress and dismissed fears that adult material was
linked to sex crime.
"Pornography
is not for people who think it's for real. It's fantasy and it's
entertainment," she said. "It's complete nonsense to blame rape on
adult material out there. Education starts at home. It's mums and dads sitting
with their children and teaching them what is right and wrong."
John
Abraham, her co-star in Shootout At Wadala, also defended her, saying those
seeking to blame porn for rapes were missing the root cause of the problem in
India—social attitudes to women and a lack of education.
"By
banning something you're not going to solve the problem. The world over, people
have access to porn. Are there rape cases like this [of the five-year-old] that
exist the world over? No. Did rape cases exist before porn came into being?
Yes," he said.
The
debate about links between porn and sex crime mirrors other largely unresolved
controversies globally about whether violent video games cause gun crime or if
gangster rap encourages anti-social behaviour.
Some
experts deny any link, pointing to stable or declining incidences of rape in
countries where porn has gone from scarcity to ubiquity in the last 15 years,
thanks to its availability on the Internet. Others say the Internet provides a
forum for criminally-minded perverts to meet and vocalise their darkest
desires.
The
Supreme Court ruling in India will set a new legally binding precedent and
could force the government to find a way to ban one of the most searched for
subjects on Google.
"In
terms of the larger debate, whether porn leads to violence, I don't think
anyone should have a knee-jerk reaction and say it does," say junior IT
minister Milind Deora. "We are a liberal society and we don't want to get
into the space of censoring content." (AFP)
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