writes Mushtaq ul Haq Sikander
I had the notion about the people of my birth burg as being the most shy, respecting honor and shame still cherishing and displaying the habits and manners that are humane; not vulgar hedonist beastly instincts. These values certainly distinguished our predominately Muslim society from other societies. We still had values to cherish, live and die for. The humanity still was alive and the Muslim collective values of how to live a life and conduct its affairs are still visible in our society! But I am also aware of the fact that the moral values are getting diminished with each passing day. I am aware of the rise in pre-marital, extra marital affairs, divorce and abortion rates, prostitution and the rise in drug and liquor intake all that certainly points out that something is terribly wrong with our moral graph.
A few days back one of my friends intimated me about the availability of the Kashmiri porn videos on the internet. I had been always busy with my creative and academic activities, that I never had any chance of browsing through a porn website. I was aware about the availability and creation of porn in Kashmir earlier. I had learnt from elders that before the initiation of armed struggle there was a porn racket run by certain influential members of the Srinagar city. But when the armed insurgency initiated, Mushtaq Ahmad Zargar aka Latram who then headed the Al-Umar militant outfit gunned down one member of the racket, making others go in hiding or switch over to some other profession. Such was Latram’s terror that he even resorted to ariel firing to disperse the mourners who had assembled at his grave. Hence the porn racket vanished in thin air.
My friend, whose conscience was bruised when he came to witness these videos on various porn websites, made me an accomplice too in his repeated browsing and locating the Kashmiri videos. I never had taste or experience of such bestiality, vulgarity but just had a bird’s eye glance over the filth and logged out soon, only to be depressed and numb to my core. For a couple of minutes both of us were shocked to utter a word.
My friend later related the details about the same. One video was related to a husband wife enjoying bliss of lawful sex, but the husband seems to have placed a hidden camera with certain nefarious plans. Another video related to smooching and other such acts with a Hijabi gal. Another one related with certain vulgar acts in a car with a Burqa clad girl. A video depicted vulgar activities of a boy and girl in a bathroom. In this video it appears that the girl had invited the boy to her home when none is around and the girl also appears to be aware of the camera, as she time and again tries to cover her face.
Another such video depicts a college girl in her uniform indulging in an open sex at some hilly area. These all details were related to me by my friend and I trusted him about the details. He went on relating about many such videos being circulated widely. When on questioning and interviewing him he intimated me that in most cases, the girls are unaware of being filmed or recorded by their lovers, paramours or boyfriends, who they trust with their bodies. The men in most cases want to record these activities. But for what reasons I questioned? He stated that the reasons aren’t known pertinently as he has met or interviewed none of these boys or men, who make these porn videos. But he and even I could guess a few dominant reasons for such activities. The boys or men want to keep a record of their sex-plots and adventures, and in some cases even display it to their friends.
In patriarchal societies women are deemed as untrustworthy, hence this proof can always be used by men to ensure the loyalty of their women and any act of deviation or disloyalty can result in blackmailing and turning girl’s life to hell. But how do these private videos that are mostly shot when the girl is unaware go public? My friend stated one recent example when a boy had stored his private sex video in his laptop that developed a technical snag. He went to repair it and the person repairing it got hold of the video and circulated it among his friends, later on it was uploaded on internet and from there it got viral.
So now here we are baffled with a serious problem! All the myths related to our civilized and honorable nature has been shattered by this obscenity worldover. I don’t buy any conspiracy theory in this case. This present pornographic catastrophy is self-made Frankenstein and if it continues unabated, the whole society would be doomed. The moral fabric of our society has been shattered to a large extent and if steps aren’t taken on a war footing it would be beyond repair.
Young boys and girls, men and women are bound to feel attracted to each other by nature. But what types of restrictions are necessary to bind the carnal desires of men and women and allow them a safe, legal and lawful passage, because uncontrolled carnal desires lead to doom of family life, hence the collective society. It is natural to feel attracted but how can one distinguish between love and lust? Most young people can’t hence it leads to disasters. We as children and youth are never inculcated with gender sensitivity by our parents or teachers. To talk about sex is a taboo, hence out of question. So our exposure and information about sex and gender is from idiot box, movies and allied stuff or the patriarchal biased views that we infer from our environment.
To add insult to injury our parents and society would cater to all needs barring the sexual ones. Particularly the parents would always deem their children to be too young to get married and become responsible. They seem to turn blind to the sexual needs of their sons and daughters. To further reinforce this demarcation and denial of lawful outlet, the marriages are becoming costly affairs; hence most youth get married only when they are overage. Till then the sexual energy needs to get dissipated and it finds outlets in such unlawful ways.
It must also be acknowledged that youth of contemporary times shirk from responsibilities. So marriage is witnessed as burden and everyone wants to enjoy the ‘freedom’ that also means the freedom of having multiple sexual partners. Also the love among couples is quite different than that we have heard or read in epic love stories of the past in which love was a pure spiritual bliss and physical union happened only after marriage. But today most youth can’t distinguish between infatuation and love. Even if the feeling and flame of love is there, it takes no time to retrograde into pure animal lust. In most cases if one or both couple’s find this instinct resisted or rebuffed they will then break up and search for other partners. Even some are in relationship with multiple partners, in order to widen their choice for suitable life partner and ultimately choose one while leaving the others heart broken or exploited or both.
None has got the time to remain satisfied with one partner, compose poetry in praise of one’s beloved, pen down the saga of betrayal in love or mourn the tragedy of separation of lovers. These events, incidents and phases related with love have become a thing of past. Add to it the practical problems of life related to career, employment and cost incurred on lavish marriages that each contribute to the delay in marriages, though marriages assure no guarantee from sexual anarchy, but they can surely act as deterrent. These practical hurdles that we impose on marriage don’t stop or halt the rush of hormones in our bodies. Unless the youth have strong self-control that can’t let them fall a prey to the carnal instincts, which most youth don’t have, the sexual anarchy can’t surely be curbed.
I wouldn’t blame completely the youth featured in these porn videos; our system, culture, parents and upbringing all are to be blamed. Our understanding of love, gender and morality seems to be flawed! Unless and until we take drastic steps to plug these flaws and undertake a holistic approach of dealing with the problems of the youth, such porn videos depicting our bestiality will continue to hit the websites time and again.
THE ARTICLE IS THE AUTHOR’S OPINION
Mushtaq Ul Haq Ahmad Sikander is Writer-Activist based in Srinagar, Kashmir and can be reached at sikandarmushtaq@gmail.com