Ranveer Singh’s nude photoshoot: ‘Nudity alone not enough to make material legally obscene,’ legal experts weigh in – Exclusive – Times of India

To understand whether Ranveer Singh’s nude photoshoot is obscene as per law and whether posting those pictures on Instagram amount to offence one needs to understand what constitutes ‘obscene’. Supreme Court lawyer Khushboo Jain explains, “The meaning of ‘obscene’ is not as easy to settle on but it must be lascivious or prurient or have the effect of depriving or corrupting someone. Now these terms ‘lascivious’, ‘prurient’, ‘deprave’ and ‘corrupt’ have not been clearly defined, leaving room for interpretation again. Over the years the honorable courts have developed tests to determine whether something is ‘obscene’.”

Advocate Hitesh Jain reflects back on the Aveek Sarkar case that was filed over a photograph of former tennis star Boris Becker posing nude with his fiancee, who belonged to a different ethnicity, meant to be a message against racism. “There’s a Supreme Court judgement in Aveek Sarkar’s case that it doesn’t come under the definition of obscenity,” he says, adding, “In today’s times, nobody can prevent people from filing an FIR, but at the end of the day we have to see whether the ingredient in the FIR makes an offence. I mean it is nowhere making any offence. This case will not hold in court. It can evoke some curiosity but it will not go beyond that. In Aveek Sarkar’s case, there was test that was applied where a person was found nude. And there have been umpteen cases like that. Even if you pose nude it will not amount to obscenity. Ranveer Singh is absolutely not guilty.”

Khushboo Jain agrees nudity alone does not make a material obscene. “The contemporary community standards test takes into account the changing values in society. What was obscene a century or even a decade ago, need not be obscene now. Since community perceptions are not static, what is obscene must also remain a fluid concept. As observed in Udeshi’s case if a reference to sex by itself is considered obscene, no books can be sold except those which are purely religious. It would be safe to say that nudity alone is not enough to make material legally obscene, she says.

Obscenity remains one of the most controversial and confounding areas of law. “Our honorable courts have struggled through the years to define it. It is like the task of trying to define what may be indefinable. The word obscenity is from one of those words whose meanings are vague or not clear in our Indian Law. The definition of word obscenity would change from time to time. What is obscene in the present day should not be treated as obscene in the future,” she concludes.