Big Boss on Colors and Rakhi Ka Insaaf on NDTV Imagine, two of the highly
successful reality shows of winter 2010, are in constant news now-a-days albeit for some bad reasons. They have been accused of presenting vulgar content to the audience including children. It seems that they have stirred the hornet’s nest. The government has directed them to air their shows after eleven PM. But, the real question is: Is this solution appropriate? In the name of protecting the young generation from depravity, are we doing the right thing?
The answer is perhaps a big NO. It seems nice to hear that by censoring contents we can prevent our children from getting access to them. But, the rot lies deeper somewhere and through this action we cannot reach there. The million dollar question today is: Even if we censor content on the television, can we stop our children from gaining access to adult materials through other media such as Internet and magazines or even through their friends? It’s pretty clear that it’s not possible. Some way or the other, children are going to have them. In most of the Indian families, parents do not discuss adult life with their growing children. In those circumstances, friends, cheap books and Internet are children' biggest teachers. This generation of MTV and Facebook is pretty fast in gathering knowledge about sex although the quality always remains doubtful and this is where the problem starts. I remember, I was 15 years old when I watched porn first, quite late by present standards. For someone who had not even watched a B-grade Hindi Movie before, it was a totally different experience. It had a lasting effect on me and it didn’t in any way made me less moral. In fact, I became more aware about my feelings afterward. My parents know nothing about this and I don’t want to tell them too. I smile when my father suggests me to change the bikini girl’s wallpaper of my computer for little he knows that I have seen much more than this.
Then, what is the way forward? Some people suggest that we should revert back to medieval era of keeping everything behind the curtain. For them, I remember what a great man wrote about how his father imparted him sex education. He wrote, “When I was 14 years old, my father took me to a brothel and told me to learn things there.” Although, this might be quite a radical idea for us, a little opening up of society is always better. It should be clearly understood that obscenity is not in the shows that we watch. Rather than, it is in our psyche, in our minds. Rapes happen even in the countries where women cover themselves from top to bottom. Women living in open societies feel safer than those living in closed ones. In open societies, women remain vocal about their rights. If anything wrong happens, they get justice easily and subsequently lead normal lives. On the other hand, in closed societies, cases of women harassment are never registered and the victims never overcome the trauma.
For opening up of society, imparting sex education in schools might be the best possible way. In this way, it won’t be a curious topic among the children. It would also make them aware of their physical needs and protect them from STDs in future. The only thing in this to be taken care of is the method of implementation. We need highly trained teachers who could do this job without compromising their integrity.
Enough we vowed to protect ourselves through abstinence. Now is the time to be more vocal and to have greater exchange of ideas on subjects that have remained taboo so far. Don’t let your child suppress his feelings. It will lead to frustration only. Psychological studies have proved it time and again that sex offenders are mostly people without troubled sex history. It’s in the human nature that whatever he is forbidden to do, he tries to do that. Eve did this and we are no different. Talking sex is not bad. Only when we do it with wrong intentions, it becomes ugly. So, don’t ban serials because it will make matters worse only.
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