Obscenity Laws in India
What is considered obscene:
- Obscene is defined as “offensive or unpleasant by generally accepted standards of morality and decency” by the Oxford Dictionary.
- For attorneys, however, the term “obscene” has a different meaning. For instance, Section 292 of the IPC specifies that a book or object must be lascivious or prurient or have the capacity to deprave or corrupt a person in order to be deemed obscene. Lacking a clear definition, words like lascivious, prurient, deprave, and corrupt are left up to the discretion of the courts.
- While the judiciary has developed guidelines to specify what behaviours are considered “obscene.”
- The Supreme Court adopted the Hicklin test from the Victorian era in 1965. Using the standard of a person who was vulnerable to immoral influences and was likely to be twisted or corrupted by the subject matter, obscenity was assessed. From this vantage point, a wide range of content could be deemed “obscene.”
- The judiciary has gradually narrowed the scope of what constitutes obscenity. In 2014, the American Roth test superseded the British Hicklin test as the new benchmark used by the Supreme Court.
- Obscenity has to be judged on the basis of common sense and existing societal norms for this exam.
- The present community standards exam takes into account society’s evolving beliefs. Things that weren’t inherently vulgar today may have been vulgar a century or even 10 years ago.
In Indian laws, what does obscenity mean?
- According to Section 294 of the Indian Penal Code, it is unlawful to engage in or utter anything that is defamatory in public (IPC).
- Obscenity must “upset other people” in order to be illegal. For breaking this law, the maximum punishment is three months in jail. Similar to this, Section 292 forbids the publication of lewd books. The laws governing obscenity have altered as a result of the growth of the Internet and social media.
- The Information Technology Act’s Section 67 may be used to bring legal action against anyone who sends or uploads objectionable content online.
- Obscenity laws have existed in India for a very long time. In colonial India, they were applied to authors who wrote about female sexuality and other sexuality-related subjects, such as Saadat Hasan Manto and Ismat Chughtai.
- All genres of literature, biopics, comedies, and other works of popular culture have been accused of using offensive language.
What about freedom of speech?
- The right to free speech and expression is not unconditionally protected. Article 19 of the Indian Constitution, which guarantees the right, also permits reasonable limitations on a number of grounds, including morality and decency. This means that free speech must be assessed against the moral standards of the contemporary community when it comes to prosecuting obscene conduct or content.
- Indian courts have frequently found ways to reconcile morality and freedom in favour of creative expression.
- In some cases, it has been discovered that content that is deemed offensive by some and artistic by others cannot be used as evidence to convict someone.
