The other Indian mobile revolution…. the sex tape

Months after the actual incident and weeks after the tape made headlines, Delhi police filed a case against two Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) students for filming and circulating a cell phone sex tape, reports the Hindustan Times.  

Yes, folks — the sex tape has hit India.  Last go around it was a schoolgirl's oral sex that made the net; this time it's college kids getting it on. But the stuffy old parents are equally upset at the moral decay that comes with MTV and an obsession with Gossip Girl.  Starting with a leaked cell phone video of a Delhi Public School (DPS) girl giving oral sex — which was used as the "inciting incident" by Anurag Kashyap in "Dev D" — the shaky handheld porn clip has become de rigeur for Indian lotharios.

But are these sex tapes* tantamount to assault — filmed surreptitiously by irresponsible guys in the throes of hormonal overload — or are they the latest evidence of a sexual revolution that has Indian women taking charge of their bodies and shaking their butts at the wagging fingers of a moralistic society? 

Tehelka's Nisha Susan writes, "THE MOMENT in which your innocent sex tape turns into porn is the moment when English news channels talk with long faces about privacy and the Hindi channels, with less long faces, use variations of the phrase ‘zaleel harkat’ ("despicable act"). Until that moment, the sex tape was something you made one bored afternoon or slightly drunken night."  But that's the end of the fun, too.  "Once earnest editorials are written about lives ruined in premier institutions, the party is, alas, over. The disingenuous questions always posed at this moment are: Why make sex tapes? Why do ‘these girls’ agree to be taped? The answer to both is ‘because they can’."

According to Susan (and a swift web search), the Internet is "awash" with Indian sex tapes, with two "blue-chip" genres — "1) Fake/real sex tapes of Bollywood or political celebrities. 2) The ‘leaked’ tape from an [elite] educational institution. IIT, JNU, Noida B-School." (She forgot "Bollywood starlet forgets to wear underwear for short-skirted public appearance," but otherwise: Kudos)

But even better than Susan's sly analysis of the emerging genres is the deadpan reaction from the JNU proctor, who describes the sex tape for the magazine: “Both of them start having sex after watching a porn clip themselves. The room has been given to them for studying and research and not for such things. There is a lot of healthy entertainment available on campus. Even then if they did such a thing, then it is objectionable.”

* There are no links to actual sex tapes in this blog post.