A New Taliban in Tamil Nadu

Sex surveys are always controversial. Alfred Kinsey found out how puritanical the US was when he published his survey of sexual mores of adult Americans in 1953. But while Kinsey faced criticism from the Church and leaders of morality movements, he never faced the kind of legal harassment that people face in Tamil Nadu.

About two months ago, the respected newsmagazine India Today published a survey of college students. In the survey, 58% of college-age students in Bombay admitted to having pre-marital sex with their boyfriends. For its Tamil language edition, India Today asked the Tamil film star Khushboo about her reaction to the survey. Khushboo, who lived together with her future husband for two years before marrying him, reportedly said that in the current times no educated man expected his wife to be a virgin at the time of the wedding and that the survey emphasized the need for safe sex in these days of widespread sexually transmitted diseases.

One would think that the comments were innocuous enough, particularly when juxtaposed against the survey which would have shattered the comfortable myths Indians grow up with and fervently believe in such as the chastity of Indian women in contrast to the promiscuity of the women of the West. One would further think that the advice about safe sex is relevant in the context that India has one of the fastest- growing HIV patient populations in the world, with Tamil Nadu leading the way. In fact, the first AIDS patient in India was identified in Tamil Nadu.

It is well known that truck drivers in India spread the disease and that their wives are infected by the truck drivers who do not use the most elementary precaution of using a condom while having sex with either prostitutes at roadside stops or with their wives. National Public Radio of the US several years ago carried an alarming report about how the spread of AID has the potential to cripple the economic growth of India by killing off its truck drivers.

The initial reaction to Khushboo’s remarks was mild enough. Sun-TV carried a report on her remarks and the news of a small demonstration against her for having maligned Tamil women. There were slogans on public walls in Tamil Nadu asking Khushboo to leave the state and go back to her Hindi-speaking motherland but only after apologizing to Tamil women.

But soon the protests snowballed into something wholly different. Various functionaries of the Pattali Makkal Katchi (PMK) at the district level started filing cases against Khushboo for defamation, for causing public disorder and for advocating immorality and thus leading the youth astray. The PMK was joined in this activity by the Dalit Panthers who also filed lawsuits against Khushboo.

The interesting thing is that these cases were all filed under criminal law. In the US, a private citizen can only file a civil case against an individual; he could prefer a criminal complaint against another person but the district attorney’s office will have to decide if there is a prima facie case and launch criminal proceedings. Here every Tom, Dick and Harry (or their equivalent Masanamuthu, Sangilikkaruppan and Sudalaikkannu) were filing criminal complaints. A total of twenty eight complaints were filed in various district courts nearly simultaneously. Judges, who have no hesitation in postponing even murder cases against politically-connected persons, responded with unusual alacrity, issuing summons to appear in their courts. At least in a few instances, these summons conflicted with each other, requiring Khushboo’s appearance hundreds of miles away on the same day.

Khushboo appeared on TV and tearfully apologized to the Tamil women for having possibly defamed them. Though the demand for an apology was met by this, the lawsuits proceeded. When Khushboo couldn’t appear in a court in Mettur, the judge issued an arrest warrant for her. Khushboo appeared at the court a couple of days later and was met by protesters throwing rotten eggs and tomatoes and showing her brooms and sandals. Police restrained the crowd from physically attacking Khushboo who was, according to The Hindu “enlarged” on bail, certainly not a happy choice of words when referring to an overweight woman.

http://www.chowk.com/articles/10027