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Indian soft porn loses sex appeal: The Hindustan Times
New Delhi, Nov 02: It`s the naked truth about girlie magazines in India. And it`s shocking. With circulation down from 3,20,000 to 32,000 copies in less than a year, many are barely surviving.
New Delhi, Nov 02: It's the naked truth about girlie magazines in India. And it's shocking. With circulation down from 3,20,000 to 32,000 copies in less than a year, many are barely surviving.
Ashok Kumar (named changed on request), a prominent publisher of soft porn magazines, blames overkill for the rot in the industry today. According to him: "Till sometime back, this was a business to make lots of easy money. The quality and quantity of centerspreads we carried ensured success and no one had cause to complain till the nudity remained under wraps. Unfortunately newcomers like 'Menz Club' and 'Guys & Dolls' got too greedy. To attract readers they began to print pictures of topless women on their cover as well, and all hell broke loose. It brought women's organisations, politicians and the cops crashing down on us. Constant police raids and legal wrangles are choking the industry to death."
"Far from just titillating their readers, these magazines played an important role in spreading sexual awareness. Sadly the easy availability of adult matter over the Internet and resistance from certain ill-informed people is forcing many publications to go under," says Khushwant Singh, one-time editor of 'Debonair', India's best-known erotic monthly.
Despite the raunchy tone of most of his own writings, Singh claims he's not insensitive to the discomfiture women feel when confronted with sexually suggestive magazine covers in public places. "I agree that some discretion should be exercised while putting girlie magazines on display. In fact let them be sold only on demand and not otherwise. The larger issue however has nothing to do with this - it's a question of freedom of expression. Why should the narrow agenda of a handful of fanatic organisations and police harassment impinge on the rights of others to read what they will?" asks the self-proclaimed 'Dirty Old Man' of Indian journalism.
But it is an agenda that the moral brigade is in no mood to give up. According to Jai Bhagwan Goel, who heads Shiv Sena's Delhi unit, topless magazines will have to mend their ways or else pack up. "These periodicals are poisoning impressionable minds with visual venom. And the result is there for all to see. I am sure the men who raped the Swiss diplomat last month are the kind of sexual perverts who have been brought up on a diet of soft porn that litters Delhi's streets. Our war against erotic literature has just started. We will become more aggressive in future and ensure that magazines like 'Debonair', 'Fantasy', 'Lacemaker' and 'Chastity' are forced to shut shop," he warns.
While many in the industry express disgust at such arm-twisting, it is a very real threat they cannot ignore. "If adult magazines are allowed to exist under the law of the land, the government should prevent radical elements from enforcing their own code of conduct. Since such issues are often emotive, they are used to gain political mileage. We were distributors for a couple of topless magazines till two years back but decided to discontinue when things got too hot to handle," admits S N Prabhakar, general manager, India Book House, Delhi.
Despite the raunchy tone of most of his own writings, Singh claims he's not insensitive to the discomfiture women feel when confronted with sexually suggestive magazine covers in public places. "I agree that some discretion should be exercised while putting girlie magazines on display. In fact let them be sold only on demand and not otherwise. The larger issue however has nothing to do with this - it's a question of freedom of expression. Why should the narrow agenda of a handful of fanatic organisations and police harassment impinge on the rights of others to read what they will?" asks the self-proclaimed 'Dirty Old Man' of Indian journalism.
But it is an agenda that the moral brigade is in no mood to give up. According to Jai Bhagwan Goel, who heads Shiv Sena's Delhi unit, topless magazines will have to mend their ways or else pack up. "These periodicals are poisoning impressionable minds with visual venom. And the result is there for all to see. I am sure the men who raped the Swiss diplomat last month are the kind of sexual perverts who have been brought up on a diet of soft porn that litters Delhi's streets. Our war against erotic literature has just started. We will become more aggressive in future and ensure that magazines like 'Debonair', 'Fantasy', 'Lacemaker' and 'Chastity' are forced to shut shop," he warns.
While many in the industry express disgust at such arm-twisting, it is a very real threat they cannot ignore. "If adult magazines are allowed to exist under the law of the land, the government should prevent radical elements from enforcing their own code of conduct. Since such issues are often emotive, they are used to gain political mileage. We were distributors for a couple of topless magazines till two years back but decided to discontinue when things got too hot to handle," admits S N Prabhakar, general manager, India Book House, Delhi.