Whether you watch porn, act in it or even direct it, chances are you are unlikely to openly talk about it in public. Pornographic content, whether it is the x-rated CDs you find people selling on the streets or the ‘tasteful’ boudoir kind of soft porn, will always be a stigmatised topic. Fearing the unforgiving judgments from friends or family, many people are hesitant to talk about their habit of consuming this content. From moral dilemmas against watching other people have sex to the possible feelings of shame or guilt for their ‘porn preference’, talking about porn to make conversation is a strict no-no.

While watching porn can help you learn some new tricks for the bedroom or even help you learn to not be ashamed of that kink you have (we’ve all been there), in the recent times porn has definitely earned itself a bad reputation. From extremely disturbing content like rape porn to child porn, the debate of ‘ethical porn’ began circulating.

India’s first attempt at banning any form of pornographic content was in 2015. Short-lived and unsuccessful, people soon found ways to stream it on their devices. However, India once again decided to ban it citing ‘porn as a wicked force in society corrupting young minds and most concerningly, causing sex crimes’.

So, to fully understand India’s ban on pornographic websites, this is everything you need to know about it in 2021-

Also Read: After The Porn Ban, Is It Legal To Watch Porn In India?

The history of India’s porn ban

The story goes back to 2013 when an advocate, Kamlesh Vaswani filed Public Interest Litigation asking the court to block pornographic websites in India. According to the Hindustan Times, he had earlier argued that the court should step in and pass an interim order to ban these adult sites from the internet in India as they promote violence towards women and encourage sex crimes. His petition read:

“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 and he believes watching online pornography has a direct co-relation with crimes against women.” as reported in the Newsgram.

In his report, he had claimed that there were 4 crore websites with adult content in the country which needed to shut down. In the beginning, the ban seemed far-fetched as the government stated their inability to implement the ban on adult websites’ servers that were located outside the homeland. With this significant logistical issue, the odds seemed to be with the pro-porn agenda rather than the anti-porn sentiment.

In July 2015, even the Supreme Court of India, the highest constitutional court, made a statement saying viewing pornography indoors in the privacy of one’s home is perfectly legal and doesn’t count as a criminal offence. Once again exhibiting how most signs pointed to the government dropping the idea of a porn ban.

However, quite the opposite happened as in August 2015, the Indian government banned access to 857 porn sites and instructed the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) to issue an order to internet service providers (ISPs) to block access to these 857 adult sites,  as reported by the Newsgram. The decision was executed quietly in hopes of the ban passing smoothly however, it sparked a thundering outrage all over the country. Citizens took to social media to criticize the BJP government’s decision. Even notable people like Ram Gopal Varma, a director, threw sarcasm at the government with his comment - “To ban porn saying it will be seen by who shouldn't see it is like saying to stop traffic because there will be accidents.” Others were more of humourous and cheeky digs at the government much like this tweet, “Stop crying over the #PornBan. The government will make sure that you get fucked.” FirstPost even published an opinion piece titled, “Indian govt's porn ban is empty, illusory measure; tackling sexual assault needs real intent and action” presenting a long critique of the porn ban. Subsequently, the government rescinded its decision a week later and only held up the ban for child pornography sites.

The issue had appeared to die down with the rescindment of the ban, however, three years later, the porn ban was revived and was making headlines once again. On October 27 of 2018, the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) instructed five of the largest Internet Service Providers of India to ban 827 pornographic websites from their network.

The 2018 ban was triggered by horrific reports of four boys that gang-raped a 16-year-old girl after luring her to a storeroom on the false pretext of preparation for Independence Day celebrations for their school. The case was initially kept secret by the school to avoid any accountability but eventually, the case became public in September. When interrogated, one of the boys revealed that the idea of rape came to him after watching porn on his mobile phone. Based on this incident, in September the Uttarakhand High Court re-appealed to the government for the porn ban to be implemented again. The court said, “unlimited access to pornographic sites should be curbed to avoid adverse influence on the impressionable minds of children.”

That may be the case but if the porn ban was really the solution is still to be studied. The after-effects of the porn ban and porn accessibility among adolescents in India hasn’t been evaluated yet so we have no evidence to prove the efficacy of the ban.

Nevertheless, major telecom companies like Jio, Airtel and Vodaphone banned and still continue to ban pornography websites from their network till date, you can still find them on google searches but most ISPs will display a page that read “YOU ARE NOT AUTHORIZED TO ACCESS THIS WEB PAGE AS PER THE DoT COMPLIANCE”.

While the ban continued, many websites found a way to give users access to their content through ‘mirror URLs’. However, soon even these mirror URL’s found themselves blocked on major providers like Bharti Airtel and Reliance Jio.

Interestingly, India is still consuming porn despite the ban

All streaming platforms participate in the new year trend of releasing a review of the previous year to show people’s viewing habits and interestingly, Pornhub participated in this trend too. Arguably one of the worlds most popular porn websites, Pornhub released a series of statistics to give us a glimpse into the world of porn. Shockingly, India’s eagerly surf the site and come in the third position to America and UK.

But even with the ban in place, according to Pornhub, India's average time spent on the website in 2018 has increased, though by only 2 seconds. The average Indian spent 8 minutes 23 seconds on the website (per session) this year.

What happened to India’s porn sites during the lockdown?

During the lockdown, whether it was the lack of physical company or just the need to blow off some steam, all of us found ourselves trying to access a porn site. These attempts were not futile as during the lockdown, there were reports of the government ‘lifting the porn ban unofficially ’ as a desperate attempt to keep people inside during India’s 1st 21- day lockdown.

A report on IBTimes.com claimed that several porn sites were opening during the lockdown. While Pornhub.com and xvideos.com were inaccessible, the report stated that pornhub.org was accessible

A popular porn website’s, xhamster, Vice President told The Print that traffic from India started increasing in ‘early February but ramped up in the last two weeks’. Interestingly, Indians are very desi when it comes to their porn choices and ‘Indian’ was the most popular category on xHamster.

Even, Corey Price, Vice President of Pornhub said: “With nearly one billion people in lockdown across the world because of the coronavirus pandemic, it’s important that we lend a hand and provide them with an enjoyable way to pass the time. We hope by expanding our offer of free Pornhub Premium worldwide, people have an extra incentive to stay home and flatten the curve.”

Stay home and help flatten the curve! Since COVID-19 continues to impact us all, Pornhub has decided to extend Free Pornhub Premium worldwide until April 23rd. So enjoy, stay home, and stay safe 🔥 https://t.co/ZponKGKSJn #StayHomehub pic.twitter.com/DxWJGBnNkC

— Pornhub ARIA (@Pornhub) March 24, 2020

So, while the porn ban was officially still up people found a way to surf these sites by using VPN’s or proxy blockers. Although you could be tempted to download one and watch a few videos, the looming question arises-

So, can you get in trouble for watching porn when it is banned in India?

For the world’s third-biggest porn-watching nation (after the US and the UK) this ban was a hard pill to swallow. Indians, however, found a jugaad(short-cuts) around the porn site ban by using VPNs, DNS server change, proxies, which deemed the ban unsuccessful in stopping them from watching porn. With these easy technological hacks, you may have fooled the system, but are you fooling the government too? Moreover, is there a chance for you to be penalized for accessing banned porn websites?

There are two answers to this question. Yes, if you're visiting websites that displays child porn as watching or promoting child pornography is a serious criminal offence in India. But no, if you're visiting an adult website that holds legally permissible porn content but is blocked in India. For example, using a VPN to access XVideos or Pornhub won't get you in legal trouble as long as you're watching them at home.

The thing is that the onus of implementing the ban is on the service provider and not on you, the user. So, if you've found a way around the system to watch legal porn content, you're in safe waters. However, if a service provider like Airtel or Jio fails to ban adult websites in accordance with the DoT's orders, it can lose its license as a consequence.

Despite the ban still in place, a report by Times of India stated that during the initial months of lockdown, the average increase in porn-watching from India was 33%, three times that of the average rise worldwide which saw an increase of 10.5%. Clearly, the porn ban has hardly deterred Indians from viewing porn.

So, while you may find nothing wrong with using pornhub, or any other porn website, to help get yourself off, the question of ethicality does arise. Watching any sort of non-consensual, racist, animal or child abuse porn is highly problematic and viewers and distributors of such videos should definitely be punished.