Setting the standards for judging whether a woman’s nude photograph is obscene, the Supreme Court has held such a picture, per se, will not be obscene, particularly when the context where it appears conveys a social message.
This question confronted the court after a local court in West Bengal ordered criminal proceedings against two publications Anand Bazar Patrika and Sports World for carrying a photograph, way back in May, 1993, showing bare bodies of tennis star Boris Becker and his dark-skinned fiancée, reproduced from a German magazine.
The two publication houses challenged the slapping of charges under IPC Section 292 (sale of obscene material) and provisions under the Indecent Representation of Women Act and questioned how carrying of the image was indecent and obscene. Applying the “community standard test”, the bench set aside the local court’s order and all proceedings against the publications as it felt that the image had to be seen in the context and message it delivered.
“The message, the photograph wants to convey is that the colour of skin matters little and love champions over colour,” the bench of Justices KS Radhakrishnan and AK Sikri said, adding that the picture conveyed the message to eradicate evil of racism and apartheid. Moreover, the fact that the tennis star had covered his fiancée’s breast with his hands aided court’s reasoning.
The bench applied yardstick that any nude/semi-nude woman’s picture, per se, cannot be called as obscene, “unless it has tendency to arouse feeling or revealing an overt sexual desire”, besides being designed to “excite sexual passion” in an average person’s mind.