Petition by Jain saint Acharya Vijay Ratnasundersuri seeking ban on cyber pornography
One of the major root causes of growing crimes against women is cyber pornography. Until we curb it effectively, any move to promote moral values or making the laws tougher will prove unproductive. Since survival of any civilisation depends upon the women, children and youth, the cyber pornography is proving hazardous for all these three.
Pramod Kumar
Extremely pained over growing heinous crimes against women, including the minor girls, leading Jain saint Acharya Vijay Ratnasundersuri Maharaj filed a petition before Petition Committee of Rajya Sabha seeking immediate ban on cyber pornography, which, he said, is polluting the young minds and leading them to commit the heinous crimes as seen in Delhi recently.
He said many democratic countries of the work including USA, UK, Australia, France, etc. have introduced specific laws and other technological solutions to curb online pornography. Therefore, India too should take concrete steps to curb this menace. He said by amending the Information Technology Act, 2000, India should add the extreme pornography and hardcore pornography on computer or mobile as a crime and should include specific provisions for severe punishment for the producer, distributer and viewers of such online pornography.
In the petition it was also suggested that India should follow the programmes of Australian Government, which are related to technological support for people surfing internet on their PCs to get rid of online pornography. Australian Government provides free Internet filters to all the PC owners at absolutely no cost. India can also provide this Filter free of cost to the PC owners as well as cyber cafes. There should be a compulsion for every Internet Service Provider to block the porn sites. ISPs like Verizon and Sprint and others have agreed to block the porn sites in USA. We also can introduce such policy for Indian ISPs, he said adding that the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India should issue the comprehensive guidelines for telecom companies to curb the watching pornography on mobile gadgets.
It is true that millions of porn sites are freely available on net. Such porn sites sell porn films through net and utilise credit card and other facilities of the banking system for such transactions. The government can take support of banking vigilance system to indentify the distributers and viewers of cyber pornography. “More than 2/3 part of India’s population is below 35 years and this part of our population is our hope for the great future of nation. On one hand, we desire to make youth empowered and skilled and on the other hand, they are getting, distorted and distressed from the various mediums of modern communication systems! Growing free-sex culture through cyber pornography is the most dangerous example of these digression, distortion and distress. Why are people getting attracted to it? What kind of entertainment is this? Which society in this civilised world defines pornography as the part of entertainment? I feel, Cyber Pornography is not manoranjan (entertainment), it is manobhanjan (mind-destruction),” Acharya Surishwar Maharaj said.
Quoting a report carried by The Times of India recently he said the number of pornography related web pages in the world grew from 14 million in 1998 to roughly 260 million in 2003, which means it increased by nearly 1800 times in the period of five years! According to India Today, “Almost 70 per cent of the traffic that passes through the gateways of Internet is adult in nature.” “And this is increasing as fast as the water flows down the slope. Various research and studies have proved that cyber pornography is hazardous for the society as a whole. It distorts social harmony and balance and creates an atmosphere of destruction which leads people to social and family dissolution. There is a horrible trend in USA, which is called ’Fatherless America’ or ’Motherless America’. This trend is related to those ‘orphaned’ children whose father or mother although alive are addicted to cyber pornography and don’t take any care of their children and the family. Do you think there is any scope of a bright future for these children?, he asked.
Due to rapid spread and growth of internet, millions of teenaged children get addicted to cyber pornography. Naturally, it affects their tender minds and hence these children have started experimenting what they watch on the porn websites. There is a sincere need to consider that how will we manage these kinds of experiment-oriented children and what will be the consequences of these experiments. “The two obvious impacts on adolescents (children between 12 to 18 years) due to cyber pornography are—first, they get addicted to it and second, they become sexually active at the tender age, which is definitely not advisable. In both the cases the implications of these tendencies are very destructive. It may lead children to a perilous chain of psycho-physical problems. They become the victims of problems like sexually transmitted disease (STD) and teenage pregnancy, whose numbers are dangerously increasing. In order to save the children and adolescents from these hazardous impacts, Government has introduced the programme of imparting sex education in schools. It has rather helped spreading free-sex culture and increase in pornography! Many western countries are experiencing this. In effect, the solution itself has become the problem,” the leading Jain saint added.
The child pornography related websites exploit innocent children for making pornographic films. This is the worst torturing aspect of cyber pornography in which sexual exploitation of children becomes a reality. These sites influence and lure millions of people to commit sexual exploitation of children. Many children from the developing countries like India have become the victims of such exploitation since many years. They also have become the victims of human trafficking and child prostitution through various online mediums available. “Cyber Pornography is nothing but a poison for the children and youths and hence is totally inappropriate, unacceptable and dangerous in our society. We should get rid of this sort of socio-cultural pollution,” the Jain saint said.
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