the pornwatching incident in karnataka is one of the few entertaining stories to come out of our boring legislatures while our lawmakers dont quite have the clintonesque panache to do interns in office at least they attempted to have some fun with their phones from selling 2g cheap to watching porn on 3g theres something about our politicos and telecomthe ironies are telling one of them is the minister for women and child development he had advised girls against wearing skimpy clothes to avoid rape also the incident happened in the state of the selfappointed guardians of indian culture the ram sene who get mighty upset when girls wear jeans or accept valentines day cards will the gutsy ram sene now march to the ministers houses and blacken their facesin fact few things bring out indian hypocrisy more than anything referring to sex we blush pretend it doesnt exist look the other way change the topic hate the person who brought it up and do whatever we can to avoid confronting a healthy balanced discussion on itin fact many say sex is against indian culture a bizarre notion for a country that reproduces faster than most other countries perhaps what the cultureprotectors are saying is this sex for pleasure is bad and since indian culture does nothing bad sex is against indian culture hence these same ministers would maintain a public stance about women covering up premarital sex being immoral and censoring anything remotely sexyand yet i can bet a number of politicians and babus watch porn in fact most people who have access to porn watch porn while only a few have the daredevil spirit and stupidity to watch it in a legislature they all consume this product that is super deadly to indian culture in fact a significant number of women watch porn too though they may not get as excited about it as say a 50 sale on their favorite handbagso why are we like this why are we so twofaced about something so natural it is a difficult question to answer but we werent always this way our ancient texts such as the upanishads discuss sex in an explicit manner the mahabharata refers to draupadis polyandry the temples in khajuraho leave little to the imaginationperhaps our attitudes changed during centuries of mughal and victorian rule both not exactly known for their liberal attitudes add a bit of brahmin puritanism to it and somewhere down the line indians began to frown upon all pleasures particularly sexhence we have heavy taxes on alcohol for instance a bottle of australian wine retails at rs 1000 though it could have an import cost of less than rs 200 mostly padded up by excise duties and of course states like gujarat have banned alcohol movie tickets carry an entertainment tax quite unjustified as people buy them with their already taxed income anyway i am quite sure that if the government could they would tax sexhowever none of these