Meet Kamlesh Vaswani, The Lawyer Responsible For The Porn Ban In India

This Sunday was not a very sunny one for most youth in India. The reason behind this unprecedented gloom was the ban of porn sites in India after an order by the Indian government to the Internet Service Providers. The action was taken just a few weeks after the Chief Justice gave a statement to the media where he said, “adults have a fundamental right to watch pornography within the privacy of their own homes.”

Then how did the ban happen?

The ban was a result of a PIL filed by an Indore based lawyer (and a self-proclaimed anti-pornography activist) named Kamlesh Vaswani. He had filed the PIL soon after the infamous Nirbhaya rape case in Delhi.

In a quote given by him to Hindustan Times he said, “The ban is definitely a step towards protecting the country’s women and children. Watching porn itself puts the country’s security in danger, encourages violent acts, unacceptable behaviour in society, exploitation of children and lowers the dignity of women.”

“My fight has been against obscenity. I feel watching porn fuels violence against women. It propels men to commit sex crimes. I saw no women come forward and speak up against pornography, so I did it,” he added.

However, no study done on a large focus group has showed that watching porn lead to an increment in violent streak among people. On the contrary, many studies show that women enjoy watching porn too.

When Mr. Vaswani was asked about women watching porn, he questioned the credibility of those reports and said, “To say Indian women watch porn is an insult to their dignity.”

According to him pornography represents women in a derogatory light and that’s the reason for unequal treatment of women in this country. He finds similarity between narcotics and porn and advocates that both of them are equally addictive.

Kamlesh Vaswani personally made the list of the 857 sites that are banned in India and handed it over to Mr Pinky Anand who works as a top lawyer and fueled the process of the ban by delivering the list to the department of telecommunications.

After his name was released in the news, many internet users have started mocking him for his lack of research and a shallow approach towards the youth’s understanding of sex and porn. Such memes have become common on the internet,

The worrying fact here is the decline of ‘discuss, debate and decide’ culture which the government has ignored in this case. If the same trend continues, it won’t be long before we head towards the death of democracy.

News Sources: Hindustan Times & Nytimes.com