When ‘pornban’ started trending on Twitter, 3 million commented live that kink in no way abets violent sexual crimes. But when an accused admitted to having watched violent porn clips on his mobile before assaulting a five-year-old girl, people started asking questions. Is it true that porn is no longer what it used to beIJ Is the youth experimenting with kink more and moreIJ With violent porn becoming as easy to get as buying a mineral water bottle, has it not ended up moulding sexual mores of normal peopleIJ Deebashree Mohanty, Shibaji Roychoudhury and Manjari Singh explore all this and more in Part 2 of the series on brutal rapes in society

• April 23, 2011 — A 12 year-old-girl was found in a drain in Narela, UP. She was raped and murdered. A tennis ball, shoved into her, had ruptured her uterus and had torn her vagina walls beyond repair. The girl suffered unbearable pain for 8-10 hours before finally succumbing to her injuries.
• August 1, 2011 — An eight-year-old girl was found dead in a jhuggi near Agra. Her rapists (6 of them) had tied her hands and feet with a chain and taken turns to rape her. Her right nipple had been bitten out and 24 glass shards were taken out of her insides. The culprits confessed to having inserted a liquor bottle into the hapless child.

Rape may be the oldest crime in the world but the added brutality to it is relatively new — new, barbaric and unrepenting. Using sexual tools is not new. What is disturbing though is the sheer violence and wantonness with which rapists have started aping what they see in the virtual realm. Freedom doesn’t mean access to information you can misuse. Agreed that it all depends on a person’s mindset, but why tempt himIJ,” Indore-based advocate Kamlesh Wasvani asks.

Wasvani had filed a PIl in Supreme Court seeking a complete ban on viewing pornography. He had also demanded that seeing child porn be made a non-bailable offence. The court dismissed his petition. “Porn is not what it used to be. Brutality in porn has become very popular. No longer are we restricted to DVDs or video clips. Today, there is porn in romantic novels, in titillating lyrics, in item numbers, mobile phones — everywhere. It is not possible to regulate who is watching what, so it should be banned for everybody,” Wasvani says. He has a point. Violent porn has, indeed, pervaded not just India but most nations. A Google trend shows that in 2012, Delhi recorded the highest percentage worldwide for the number of times ‘porn’ was searched online. The NCRB data for the same year shows that 706 rapes were reported in the Capital, the highest in the last decade and more than double the number in 2002.

What is alarming is the growing acceptance of what is generously called “alternate sexuality”, a domain in which not only are the women subjected to torture but shown to be enjoying the violent acts. An institution no less than Harvard Business School recently accepted a student group propelling violent experimentation in genres like BDSM, kink and role play.

Back home, Pulkit Sharma, clinical psychologist and psychoanalytical therapist with VIMHANS, Delhi, says that the alarming point is not kink but the commonality that cruel sexual mores have gained. He insists that one in every three men in India harbours savage fantasies. “Not all such minds have the strength to not succumb to them, especially on unwilling women, even children. So, though porn is not directly abetting rapes, you cannot rule out its role in giving ideas to weak minds,” he explains. Sharma talks of how the working wife of a highly placed professional sought his help to sort out her husband. “She found out that he was hiring prostitutes to play out his kinky acts. Much of what he did had to do with role play, in which he was paying the woman to act like a slave and bear his violent acts while begging for mercy.”

If one talks of commonality, kink has pervaded sophisticated bedrooms too. A young working couple had to rush to hospital after a test tube burst in the wife’s vagina, thanks to an experimental romp in bed. It took her months to recover, strained the relationship and, of course, killed the possibility of the wife ever conceiving.

“Indeed, our sexual mores are changing rapidly. People are easily bored. The urge to experiment comes from there. Control is missing. Add to that the ‘dare’ attitude and you have a dangerous mix. Where are they getting the ideas fromIJ Of course, the virtual medium,” activist Nafisa Ali says. She adds that, today, porn is more about enjoying the suffering. “Why show a woman being torturedIJ Why is she being tied, spanked and abusedIJ The man rapes and tortures while the woman suffers it all and sometimes even shown as enjoying it,” she says.

In the latest survey by condom company Durex, more than 46 per cent of the loyal porn community swore by schoolgirl rape videos. These respondents, over the age of 40, said they preferred schoolgirl rape porn because they were in control of things. The more the pain, more the pleasure, 23 per cent agreed. Fifteen per cent said they would like to try out ‘stuff’ from porn clips.

Sexologist Prakash Kothari is worried that rape videos and child abuse have stormed the porn industry. “Porn has evolved and it is worrisome,” the Mumbai-based doctor says, but is clear that regulation of such content is impossible. “Porn is available as easily as a bottle of mineral water. How can you regulate that,” he asks.

One stroll down Palika Bazar and you know what Kothari means. The popular shelf for contraband porn DVDs is flooded with demand for rape, gangrape, torture, wax abuse and dungeon DVDs — and they sell these as cheap as Rs50!

“Schoolgirl gangrape videos, especially the Japanese schoolgirl train gangrape one, is a bestseller. There are at least 30-40 versions of this with 14 to16-year-old schoolgirls being assaulted. These videos go for Rs100. Machine torture is also popular. Videos on husband and wife cheating sell well,” a shop helper reveals. These DVDs are easy and cheap to make. All the shopkeepers do is to log on to the Internet, pay a meagre $15 to a violent porn site, download and make a cocktail of 10-minute clips to mint money.

But even DVDs now come second on the market shelf. The fastest way to get porn is to buy mobile phones with pre-loaded porn clips for a few hundred rupees more. “Mobile porn is the newest fad with youth who can now skip parental guidance at home. The cost of the clips varies on the duration and the genre of the porn. For three 10-minute videos, we charge Rs150 extra. If it is a rape video, the charges go up to Rs100 a clip. If the duration is 40 minute to an hour, it costs Rs300,” a shop-owner in Delhi’s Gaffar Market, tells you.

Brothels in the Capital have been bearing the brunt of this in increased sexual aggression which a ‘madam’ says does not come with the niche tag of ‘alternate behaviour’. It’s scary what they want us to do and clients coming with mobile clips have become quite common,” says Santra Devi (name changed on request), an ageing sex worker in Delhi’s infamous red light area on GB Road. Paying for traditional sex is passe. First it was dirty pictures in magazines, now it is kink on mobiles. If the sex worker cannot emulate these violent acts, she is virtually out of business.

“After the rape incidents, raids by cops have increased. Most girls are living hand to mouth. Only those well-versed in kink survive here,” says Santra. Girls fine with doing the kink get paid much more than those who are unwilling. “Some of us commit to the nasty stuff unwillingly because we need the money. We agree to have sex for as little as Rs100. Those who want kinky stuff agree to pay us between Rs1,000 and Rs1,500. If the torture lasts for 2-3 hours, they pay us Rs4,000,” she says. According to her, it is the ‘educated’ upper class that comes with the most horrifying video clips which they want to play out with the sex worker.

“Earlier customers would watch the mujra, select a girl and take her home. But now it is not all that simple. Customers want to play dirty,” another sex worker says. But she also credits the red light areas for being responsible for safety of women. “If not for us, there would have been more cases of brutal rapes. The men  who come to us are sexually charged and very dangerous,” she says.

Shrinija (name changed), 41, a sex worker from West Bengal recalls her horrifying experience when a customer. “It was weird, painful and extremely humiliating to be a part of such a cruel fantasy. I am happy that I am still alive after such terrible encounters,” she says. These girls prefer to have these violent encounters strictly in the brothel “where we can be saved if it gets really unbearable,” Shrinija says.

If the easy accessibility of porn clips has made life hell for sex workers, there is a child community out there too which is in danger. All it takes to now access child pornographic material is a Google search even though paedophilia is officially banned worldwide.

Wasvani’s petition lists the scores of chatrooms that sanctify misogynistic desire for virginity with names such as ‘18 looking for experience’ and ‘legal today’. In freely available video streams, the age of girls being subjected to varying degrees of sexual humiliation remains questionable. “A few clicks away from one’s homepage lies access to widely posted pictures of children without clothes. Are we not exposing them to perverts. Are we not tempting such people to harm our childrenIJ We are teaching them to rape,” Wasvani says, explaining why kink has pervaded all spheres.

For a country that lacks proper sex education, free and unregulated violent porn blurs the difference between real and virtual. According to a Japanese company that markets sex toys, India comes third after Singapore in the import of sex toys. “If you see something on TV and then find the product in the market, will you not want to buy itIJ Sex toys are expensive, so men find easy replacements. The problem is, they don’t know where to stop. For them, if a cucumber can be inserted into a woman’s private parts why can’t a spannerIJ Or a bottle of oilIJ,” Meera Behura, a clinical psychologist formerly from VIMHANS, says. Behura tells you that most cases of child abuse are result of men desiring to be dominant. “He knows the child cannot struggle to get free. He likes that. Also a child is an easy target to experiment. The risk of getting caught is negligible. Child abuse cases go unnoticed,” she adds.

The remedy, Dr Kothari tells you lies in proper sex education rather than banning porn, which technologists agree is not possible. “The Government has made several attempts to stop viewership of these websites. They have made several attempts like creating firewalls, parental control softwares. They even banned www.savitabhabi.com in 2009. Despite these attempts, not much could be achieved as it is very difficult to identify the actual IP address of these international porn sites. Even if the authorities manage to hack into one and block it, the creator soon find another domain and puts up the content. Banning porn becomes even more difficult as these websites are beyond territorial and Governmental boundaries where our laws don’t count,” prominent cyber law expert Pawan Duggal tells you.

He, however, adds that the Government should work at eradicating sadistic porn involving children. “The laws on child pornography are similar in most countries and their Governments are willing to co-operate in the eradication of child abuse in porn. Also, the softwares created so far on parental control have been quite ineffective,” Duggal explains.

While the burden of blame falls mostly on the porn industry, Bollywood too cannot wash its hands off the problem. Many activists tell you that the entertainment hub is unintentionally, promoting porn. From advertisements like Aam Sutra which shows Katrina Kaif licking her lips suggestively to sell a juice variety, to the more direct ones that propel women and children as sex objects, these advertisements play a huge role in influencing sexual behaviour. Then, there are albums by rapper Honey Singh wherein kink and porn sung blatantly. “Porn sites have been on an upward spiral ever since Sunny leone (porn actress) entered TV for a reality show,” Duggal says.

Rapes were shown in films even in the 60s and 70s, but today it is much more gruesome and bids to play to the gallery. In the 1994 film Bandit Queen, where the lead actress Seema Biswas (who plays Phoolan Devi) was stripped in public, mercilessly beaten up and repeatedly raped. A similar incident happened in a village in Madhya Pradesh where a woman was stripped in public, raped by several men and beaten to death.

He adds that the Government should work at eradicating sadistic porn involving children. “The laws on child pornography are similar in most countries and their Governments are willing to cooperate in the eradication of child abuse in porn. Also the softwares created so far on parental control have been quite ineffective,” Duggal tells you.

Agarwal has a different take on this issue. Although he feels that it seldom happens that a person will commit rape after being turned on by a porn clip. He agrees that porn in the hands of a pervert could make him do things. “Before going on banning things we should define deviant sexual behaviour. As with anything else, I believe your sexual preferences should be a matter of personal choice. Till just a few years back homosexuality was illegal in India and classed as deviant sexual behaviour, now it’s not. The simple fact is that if what you do is not hurting anyone else and you do it in the private confines of your home, then there should be no one telling you what you can and cannot do,” he says.

While the burden of blame falls mostly on the porn industry, Bollywood too cannot wash its hands off the problem. Many activists tell you that the entertainment hub is unintentionally, promoting porn. From advertisements like Aam Sutra which shows Katrina Kaif licking her lips suggestively to the more direct ones that propel women and children as sex objects, these advertisements play a huge role in influencing sexual behaviour. Then, there are albums like ch*t by rapper Honey Singh, where kink and porn is advertised openly. “Porn sites have been on an upward spiral ever since Sunny leone (porn actress) entered TV for a reality show,” admits Duggal.

Rapes were shown in films even in the 60s and 70s, but the rape shown today is not only gruesome but the intensity and mercilessness which modern film-makers state as realistic cinema is only promoting appalling ideas. In the 1994 film Bandit Queen, where the lead actress Seema Biswas (who was playing Phoolan Devi) was stripped naked in public and mercilessly beaten after being raped repeatedly. A similar such incident happened in a village in Madhya Pradesh where a woman was stripped in public, raped by several men and beaten to death.

‘Rape is a mindset not related to porn’

london-based Puneet Agarwal, creator of porn comic strip Savita Bhabhi, now banned in India, says porn has evolved and so have sexual mindsets. Time to stop passing the buck, he tells Deebashree Mohanty

What is your take on talk that kinky porn directly abets rape and other forms of sexual violenceIJ

In response to the argument that porn encourages violence towards women, multiple studies worldwide have concluded the liberalisation of porn in society may actually be associated with decreased rape and sexual violence rates. Extreme criminals like rapists are not born out of watching pornography. They are a product of much more vicious economic and social factors of society.

The main problem with our culture is our need to blame others. You do not need a Savita Bhabhi or a porn film to corrupt minds. These protectors of morality are the same people who leer even at a fully dressed woman shopping at a grocery store. Savita Bhabhi was launched a year ago, Internet porn came a decade or more years back — but rowdy guys eve-teasing in India have existed much before then. So, who exactly are we blaming for thatIJ

Is it possible for any Government to do away with sites/mobile clips with porn contentIJ Will that curb growing deviant sexual behaviour in a fast changing nation like IndiaIJ

Before we get to this, I think we need to define deviant sexual behaviour. As with anything else, I believe your sexual preferences should be a matter of personal choice. Till just a few years back, homosexuality was illegal in India and classed as deviant sexual behaviour, now it's not. Fact is that if what you do is not hurting anyone else and you are doing it in the private confines of your home, then there should be no one telling you what you can and cannot do.

How has porn evolved in the last decadeIJ And why is there such currency for experimental, alternate sexual demand the world overIJ

Everything evolves. that’s the basic fact of life. So has porn. It’s porn that follows sexual choices, not the other way round. Its evolution is merely a reflection of changing sexual tastes of world populations, of art following life.

Some sexologists differentiate between good and bad kink. Do you think such a distinction existsIJ

No. It's a purely personal choice. As long as it's safe and does not hurt anyone, there should be no distinction.

In the absence of sex education in a country like India, is it not true that easy access to titillation through kinky porn, especially with a not-so-easy access to women, makes people go for rapeIJ

It's got nothing to do with the titillation provided by porn, but more about the mindset that sex is regarded with. Rape is a violent crime. People just don't go out and rape women because they are sexed up. It is people with a very different mindset who rape. lack of sex education is definitely the cause for molestation of women in India.

Tell us about the SB writers. Where do they draw inspiration fromIJ

All SB plots are based on real life fantasies of our authors and fans. They are all something that a normal, full-blooded Indian male or female would be fantasising about. We get tons of email from fans detailing their fantasies. We try to keep all our plots fairly believable (for someone with a vivid imagination of course) which could just lead into a sexual adventure!

How is SB received in US and EUIJ

After India, the US is our biggest market. The NRIs from all around the world access my website. We get visitors from every country in the world with the exception of Greenland and Sudan!

Tell us about the animation film are working on (to be released in May).

It is only though fan support in the last five years that Savita Bhabhi has been kept alive. A recurring request has been to elevate Savita Bhabhi to the next medium, from still comics to a movie. We were finally in a financial position to invest in a movie and so as a way of giving back to the fans, we have embarked on this project.