The photo alongside this post is from Khajuraho - that too, from a temple there - and my purpose is to illustrate the fact that ours used to be a sexually liberated society. Not any more. Not even in the internet age. Today, despite the internet, Playboy magazine - which once published an interview with Ayn Rand - is banned. Though thanks to "import substitution" we do have our desi version - Debonair - of which a great man like Vinod Mehta was once editor.
I was drawn to this subject by a report in the ToI which begins as follows:
Consumption of pornography is no offence. All that the law forbids is its publication or transmission. If the railway police in Mumbai could still terrorise an IIT student, just by claiming that his mobile phone stored pornographic video, they were riding roughshod over his human rights.
Once again, the only way out is the Inviolability of Private Property. It begins with the human body, and each of us is the Sole Proprietor of his or her body. We can thus display this body unclothed - if we choose to do so. Some of us do possess bodies that others consider beautiful - the "subjective" factor - and we can take advantage of this fact by posing naked for money. We can pose for stills - or for films. These stills and films will be shot in studios - which are also private property. These shots will be printed in magazines - private property once again, as are reels of film. Finally, these will be displayed in magazine shops or movie theatres, which are private property, too. The audience that buys the magazines now possesses them as private property. Similarly, those who buy tickets to see blue films possess temporary property rights to be seated in the theatre. If private property is inviolable by all, including The State, all is hunky-dory, none can interfere, and business can carry on as usual.
Now, a strange kind of man-made law like the IT Act, which allows the consumption of porn but not its production or distribution, is not unlike the Narcotics & Psychotropic Substances Act which allows smoking ganja but not its cultivation or sale. But as any ganja smoker will tell you, how can one peacefully smoke ganja if farmers cannot peacefully grow it and dealers cannot peacefully sell it? Such man-made laws are stupid - not based on any sound principle, like Private Property.
Private Property must be inviolable if we are to be completely free. Even immigration restrictions can be shown to violate property: for example, if one rents property in the US, even a hotel room, and if one is not allowed to enter the country, then the immigration authorities can be shown to have violated the property rights of both the foreigner who has rented it and the American citizen who owns it. Thus, a great deal depends on this principle - Complete Freedom.
Mises wrote something very important about Private Property:
Private property creates for the individual a sphere in which he is free of the state. It sets limits to the operation of the authoritarian will. It allows other forces to arise side by side with and in opposition to political power.
With our Socialist Constitution which glorifies "collective property," we have very little Liberty to celebrate. All we have are Air India, SAIL, ONGC et. al. What would you choose? PSUs or Liberty?
Hence, a New Constitution is an imperative. We must proceed forthwith to The Second Republic. We must be free! Liberty!
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