“Pornography” as a Right or as Violative of Rights?

The researcher aims to analyse the question of whether pornography amounts to violation of human rights from a jurisprudential and legal perspective. The common definition of Pornography is that it is a “printed or visual material containing the explicit description or display of sexual organs or activity, intended to stimulate sexual excitement”. The definition of pornography itself is debatable as an attempt to define it has major social and legal consequences. The word ‘pornography’ is known to have Greek origin and is similar to the word ‘pornographos’ which means “the depiction of prostitutes, describing the life, manners, and customs of harlots and their patrons”. While analysing the concept of pornography as a right, it is curtailing a person’s right to freedom of speech and expression and right to privacy. But another perspective to be looked into is the obscenity of pornography that opposes the public policy by leading to harm to women, as a result of which it is debated to be essentially right to criminalise pornography because to preserve and maintain public morality and decency. The second aspect the researcher aims to analyse is how pornography is violative of human rights as it holds the potential to influence human behaviour leading to sexual violence in society especially to women. There is an increased demand by the public on account of violence to women to regulate pornography based on the perceived harm it inflicts on women. Pornography is considered to be a tool that portrays the domination of men over women and hence violating the equality of rights among them. The researcher in this paper mainly wants to draw out an analysis for and against pornography, violation of women’s rights and a concise picture of pornography law in India