Attacks on stores and restaurants that celebrate Valentine’s Day. Protests against artists and writers who link Hindu gods with sexuality. The arrest of couples who put their arms around each in public. Throughout much of the country, Hindu fundamentalists are engaged in “pervasive and often violent moral policing.” Hence, we can say that the regression of society has made erotica from being widely accepted to a taboo.
For the past few years, sex and India has been in the news, mostly in a negative light – highlighting a rape culture and gender disparity that’s rearing it’s head on a global scale. It’s ironic, considering the restrictive and puritanical attitudes towards sex and their consequences on women in modern-day India, that pre-colonial India was relatively open when it came to eroticism. Sex and nudity features prominently in temple sculptures, and in Indian literature; the most well-known erotic literature about sex practices in human history is the Vatsyayana Kamasutram, written somewhere between 400 BCE and 200 CE. Up until the invasion of India by several nations, erotica was perfectly acceptable, if not encouraged, in Indian life. But gradually, Hindu attitude towards sex became increasingly seen as “barbaric”. This unfortunate way of thinking was imposed on India and eroded their attitudes towards one of life’s few pleasures, and as a result these ideals became the norm in India, and conservative sex values are still the norm today.
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