[Reader-list] Savita bhabhi: why did Indian govt. ban her?

[anupam chakravartty]

Sukanya,

Your argument here doesnt anything new but boils
down to this sentiment "take it or leave it". If the creators of Savita,
instead of advertising his site through all the major media organisations
would have stuck to traditional mode of reaching out to their readers, like
how roadside vendors do, then it would have made more sense. The salesman in
a train plying between Kanpur and Mughalsarai after selling 20 porn books
worth Rs 10 get Re 1 as commission for every book that he sells. Mind you, a
woman selling pornography is yet to happen in India. That would be the
first day of sexual revolution. I am not a part of the moral policing
brigade. Those were my personal views and I am still opposed to this
commodification of women or men as defined sex objects at the cost of
artistic expression. Moreover, it is the marginalised existence of
pornography or pornographic literature which makes it more accessible to
those who want to relieve themselves from repression.

On second thoughts, if i am permitted to imagine this way of advertising
pornography, with the kind of hypocrisy that exists in India about
expressing our own sexual desires, imaginary large sex shops showing Savita
as some kind of demi god where one can "enjoy" the feeling of being
seduced by their own imagination will have less number of people crowding
about the space. The reason: everybody wants to be a voyeur, to stay huddled
in a corner without being noticed and imagine their fantasies.

So Pornography is a sign of healthy society then Savita is the poster girl
for the Sexual revolution in India right? The greatest impediment against it
will be people's own hypocrisy. And it is not as if by allowing or not
allowing a porn site to function in the internet by the government, the goal
of the sexual revolution be achieved. I still can see mothers, aunties
getting scandalised when the condom campaign by NACO was aired on TV
channels. There are people arguing in this list for Baba Ramdev and
how homosexuality can be cured (which is ridiculous).

-Anupam



On 7/15/09, Anivar Aravind <anivar.aravind at gmail.com> wrote:

> An Interesting  Research by Itty Abraham published on The Fishpond
>
> Sex in the Neo-liberal City: On Savita Bhabhi
> http://thefishpond.in/itty/2009/on-savita-bhabhi/
> <quote>
>
> Or are we closer to Ashok, driven by the pressures of an unrelenting
> work schedule, who never gets a chance to enjoy the fruits of the new
> urban paradise that his labors have helped create? Doomed to
> invisibility if he ever gets off the treadmill, his rewards are a
> domestic space surrounded by the material signs of achievement — TVs,
> fridges, microwaves, sofas. The lack of time he has to enjoy these
> pleasure goods is one pathetic symptom of his condition: an even more
> perverse situation is that these objects become voyeuristic witnesses
> to the infidelities taking place at home, those sexual transgressions
> and pleasures which he cannot be privy to. His is a world of
> production without consumption, singularly lacking in pleasure, made
> worse by the infidelities of his wife. Ashok is further made an object
> of ridicule by Savita’s double entendres and unspoken comments (to
> which readers are privy), which make him — pathetic, humiliated,
> ignorant, silent, absent — a peculiar, altogether spectral, symbol of
> our times. Necessary but not sufficient Ashok is the other side of
> this neo-liberal dream space.
>
> </quote>
> http://thefishpond.in/itty/2009/on-savita-bhabhi/
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