Commentary/Vir Sanghvi

The media need to come down heavily on these self-righteous voluntary organisations

Perhaps the only silver lining in the whole affair is that the Bombay police -- no slouches when it comes to interrogating nude models and pythons -- seem to have seen sense. They have recognised Pooja is the victim, not the offender and have been candid enough to say so on television.

But there are serious issues here. One: we need a law that protects people's privacy. Two: we need to define obscenity a little more carefully. Three: the media need to come down more heavily on the self-righteous voluntary organisations that make a virtue of their illiteracy and pillory innocent people in an effort to win publicity for themselves.

And four: we need to accept technology has made our conceptions of censorship irrelevant. You can censor books and you can censor movies. But you can't censor television unless you tour the country in a fleet of helicopters looking for satellite dishes. (This apparently is what the information and broadcasting ministry intends to do after the new Bill is passed.)

And even if you can control broadcasting, the Internet is virtually impossible to police. As advanced a society as the United States has had enormous difficulty in trying to keep kiddie-porn off the Net. It is hard to see how we in India can do any better.

The consequence is if government censorship is impossible -- as I suspect it soon will be because of technological advances -- then the onus is on us in the media. We need to evolve some code of our own. And we need to exercise a measure of restraint.

Ultimately you can't stop some pervert from putting porn on the Internet. Nor can you stop him from invading somebody's privacy. But you can avoid publicising this perversions. You can stop being willing accomplices to his sickness. And you can ensure in your own publications you maintain certain minimum standards of decency and respect for other persons.

The tragedy alas is that none of us -- and I include myself in this category -- has thought enough about self-censorship and a code of ethics. The time has come for us now to sit down and work out new safeguards for decency and privacy in the age of Internet.

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