Will Indian Porn Ever Come Of Age?

Here's what the average Indian thinks about pornography. Yes they do think of it.

“Man! You gotta flick your bean once in a while,” said a friend of mine after I had spent an hour whining about my long distance relationship. I had experienced writer’s block, but this was different. I christened it my ‘masturbation block’. The truth was that I had never watched porn. Well, not intentionally at least.

The first time I watched it was accidentally…like many other Indian teens. I clicked on something hidden deep within the depths of my desktop’s hard disk. The first scene was that of an innocent looking girl in her teens (at best). She was wearing a sun dress, smiling coyly as she swayed at a guy wearing a Knicks cap and tattooed sleeves. “A rom-com,” I thought, until the guy said, “I’d like to watch you pee…”

I sat through two hours of that. By the end of it I was crying. It was so gruesome; the thoughts behind the act more than the physical manifestations themselves. I was far from titillated. I gave it a couple more shots but it always made me feel the exact same way – disgusted!

Indian porn anyone? Image source: dailymotion.com

Most people who know me find it hard to believe that I don’t watch porn. And yet the reasons are so basic. How the hell do you expect me to jack off to a bunch of silicon stuffed titties and asses? I am a heterosexual woman and everything I watched online seemed so delicately designed for men, it did me no good.

When the frustration levels reached a limit, I got down to doing some research. It was then that I unearthed something called ‘feminist porn’. I had to pay for it. I delved deeper and discovered people like Erica Lust who treat porn as seriously as art. And it was art. It was made with all the aesthetics of an intelligent film. I heard her talk passionately about the need to make real and inclusive porn, and I agreed with that view. Did it get me off, though? Sadly no. 

I needed something I could relate to, something more authentic. It was too…white, too Western, too nothing-I-would-ever-do-with-my-partner because we were not French and my skin didn’t look like it had been dipped in Amul milk powder.

That’s when it struck me that I had no idea how Indians actually had sex.

Ban Kamasutra? Image source: nhungdieuthuvi.com

Astonishing isn’t it? For a country that has 51 births per minute, we had created this great big illusion (read lie) that Indian men and women weren’t having sex. And if they were, then how? I found it hard to believe that nobody from my country had realized that Indians were just as hot in bed. We gave the world the Kamasutra and Khajuraho, both of which we were on the brink of denying and banning because hey! Indians don’t have sex, much less enjoy it or experiment with it.

Porn is as personal as sex and masturbation, because it’s a catalyst for both. Despite this, an entire generation of Indians has grown up watching men and women that looked nothing like them, fornicating in a way that was entirely different. It made the expectations of Indian men understandable. No wonder they were humping, expecting us to say stuff like “yeah, right there” in an accent that sounded like something from the shanties of New Orleans. And when they didn’t get that, they felt let down.

The youth of India is too clever, too informed, to fall for fairness cream advertisements. They call out people who make such content and laud Abhay Deol when he did the same. Then why are they all sitting secretly on their reclining computer chairs jerking off to a 36 DD sized bust that looked straight out of Playboy mansion? The reality is that they have never seen an Indian woman in bed, barring Bipasha Basu in Jism who was obviously a villain so she did ‘dirty things’, and Sunny Leone who was technically an NRI - “Yaar, Amrica mein toh sab chalta hai.”

Many takers for western porn. Image source: pinterest

I was so intent on getting to the bottom of this lack of good Indian porn situation, that I actually created a Google form which I convinced 36 people to fill.

80.6% of them had watched porn between the ages of 13-18. 
58.3% clicked on the option ‘Porn is where I got my sex education’. 
52.8% said ‘It looked like an MMS’. 
36.1% said, ‘I watched it for a few minutes to see what Indian porn looked like but it was horrible’. 
The smallest slice from my survey pie chart said ‘It was gross’. 
And such a negligible percentage said, ‘It was well made’ that it made me feel like they chose that option by mistake.

Was it shocking that after this, 53.1 % said they watched ‘mostly international porn’ and 34.4% were honest enough to say that they watched ‘only international porn’? Hell no, I knew that already.

International porn wins hands down. Illustration by: Eshna Goenka

The same week I bumped into controversial film maker Qaushik Mukherjee who has addressed the taboos around sex and masturbation in his films – like Gandu, Love in India and Brahman Naman – by attempting to normalize them as natural tendencies in his characters. I shared my lamentations with him.

“I have often been called a porn film maker but I don’t consider that an insult. I wish I really was one. We find out about sex from our friends, or that super weird brother or porn. All of these sources are very dubious and that’s a problem because our sexual identities are a critical part of who we are. If there is a problem with someone’s sexual identity they’re most likely to be assholes. So the kind of porn one watches is very important as it shapes our sexual inclination.”

A clip from Q’s Brahman Naman. Image source: sbs.com.au

Talking in this way with Q, I found out about initiatives like the ‘Pleasure Project’, which is trying to eroticize safe sex. With so much positive energy and active involvement from filmmakers and activists around the globe who are trying to ensure that porn films don’t send out the wrong message to the youth, it is sad to see India play no role in it. In fact deny it with our various bans on anything remotely sexual. Reiterating this Q added, “People are not going to stop watching porn or watching Kamasutra and I think the Indian Government should realize this. Filmmakers should play an active role in producing pornography that is real and personal. I for one would love to contribute, but my hands are tied by laws and other social exigencies. The reality is that sex is integral to every human being and if the entire concept wasn’t so stigmatized, people would be leading healthy sexual lives and we’d be a much happier country. Of course that’s simplifying it, but it is an important change that needs to come about in our society. The idea is open, someone just needs to take the first step.”

He also added that he enjoyed watching Japanese porn and called it less plastic, more Asian and used a term that I had been looking for to describe the kind of porn I would personally like to watch – porn that was ‘closer to home’.

The form I made

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are independent views solely of the author(s) expressed in their private capacity and do not in any way represent or reflect the views of 101India.com.

By Suman Quazi
Cover photo credit: India.com