PORN AND PREJUDICE

Last month, the police made a celebrity arrest for porn trafficking. The accused, Raj Kundra, countered that the material he had been circulating was erotic, not pornographic. Since we are not privy to the particularities of the disputed material, the point is moot, but it’s a reminder that the law is not sensitive to the distinction between pornography and erotica.

Section 67A of the Information Technology Act, the law invoked in the Kundra case, prohibits the circulation of “explicit material”, legal language that makes no distinction between purchasing a sexually explicit home video to watch with your consenting partner and acquiring a sexually violent video to watch as a prelude to a gang-bang.