How Modi sarkar is getting jerked into unblocking porn

While it took months for the Modi government to do a flip-flop on the Land Acquisition Bill, it is acting faster on another PR disaster. It is changing its mind on blocking porn sites faster than you can say XXX. The government may not have relented to public outrage on capital punishment or Lalitgate, but it is beginning to see reason in porn watchers’ arguments. While we still wait for achhe din, achhi raatein could soon be back. Ja Simran, ji ley apni zindagi.

Unreliable sources say the Modi government is under great pressure not just from the jokes on Twitter but also the Bharatiya Janata Party itself. BJP leaders have reminded communications minister Ravi Shankar Prasad that their own legislators in Karnataka and Gujarat have in the past been caught watching porn in the Assembly. While Karnataka’s capital Bangalore is India’s Silicon Valley, Gujarat, as we all know, is heaven on Earth. If these states could prosper so well with BJP MLAs watching porn in the Assembly, the argument from the party goes, online porn must surely be a useful thing in making India the greatest nation on Earth once again.

Sources say that the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS) has also pitched for unblocking porn sites using the Kama Sutra and Khajuraho’s fornicating sculptures as examples to show that pornography is not anti-Hindu.

Prasad admitted that he is reconsidering the blocking order after people began to compare the Indian government with Islamist fundamentalists.

“I reject with contempt the charge that it is a Talibani government, as being said by some of the critics. Our government supports free media, respect communication on social media and has respected freedom of communication always,” Prasad said.

For such tall claims of respecting freedom of communication, he did not explain why the blocking order was not made public. It was only when porn watchers were unable to get their daily fix that they persuaded some friends in the DeiTy pipeline to leak a copy of the order. He also did not explain why he wants to bring back the draconian Section 66A of the IT Act if he respects freedom of communication.

The government’s spin doctors immediately got on the job to deflect attention to child porn and the Supreme Court. It said that it would block only those sites that have child porn, and that it had acted on the direction of the Supreme Court. The spin doctors felt that porn watchers were too dumb to Google and find out that the Supreme Court had in fact issued no such direction.

Porn watchers, not wanting to embarrass the minister, did point out that he has in the past expressed strong views against pornography. “The larger issue of respecting cultural values of the country and sentiments of the Indian society need to be considered and all possible ways and means may have to be devised in this context,” minister Prasad had observed in September last year.

For now, the government has decided to not respond to the charge that the blocking order was illegal, as the blocking rules in the IT Act do not allow blocking sites for reasons of “morality”.

Modi bhakts on Twitter, a key arm of the government’s propaganda initiative, are also lobbying hard by DM-ing BJP leaders and ministers to unblock porn sites. Taking note of some international porn sites trolling the Indian government on Twitter, one Modi bhakt points out that trolling has so far been their monopoly. “Besides”, he is learnt to have informed top government officials, “how can you not let us watch porn after we troll the liberals all day for you?”

One international porn site has even revealed that its employees read Chetan Bhagat. Another XXX site has asked Indians to “vote better next time”. 

The BJP’s crisis managers are said to be panicking at losing the ever-growing vote bank of online porn consumers. “As a national political party, we simply can’t afford to piss off the porn industry,” he said on condition of anonymity.

The government has inadvertently included some non-porn sites in its list of 857 URLs to be blocked. One such, called College Humor, has trolled the government with an article, “12 facts I made up about India because they can’t see this article right now”. The Congress party called an emergency meeting of its spokespersons and decided its new strategy if the government unblocks porn sites. It will then attack the government for spreading awareness of pornography.