Pros And Consequences Of Obscenity

A German magazine by name “STERN” having worldwide circulation published an article with a picture of Boris Becker, a world renowned Tennis player, posing nude with his dark-skinned fiancée by name Barbara Feltus, a film actress, which was photographed by none other than her father. The article states that, in an interview, both Boris Becker and Barbara Feltus spoke freely about their engagement, their lives and future plans and the message they wanted to convey to the people at large, for posing to such a photograph. Article picturises Boris Becker as a strident protester of the pernicious practice of “Apartheid” and also stated that the purpose of the photograph was to signify that love champions over hatred.

Anandabazar Patrika, a newspaper

In response to a private complaint, the police registered offences of obscenity under Section 292 and promoting enmity between different groups under Sections 153A and 153B of the Indian Penal Code, 1860 for the publication of a poem that used Mahatma Gandhi’s voice to make vulgar, obscene and indecent remarks. The accused persons petitioned a 2 judge bench of the Court to discharge them on the grounds that this prosecution violated the freedom of speech and expression. The Court clarified that the applicable test in India was no longer the Hicklin test but the contemporary community standards test developed by the US Supreme Court in Miller v. California It confirmed that the Miller three-step test required an enquiry into: (a) whether ‘the average person, applying contemporary community standards’ would find the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest; (b) whether the work depicts or describes in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct or excretive functions specifically defined by the applicable State law and (c) whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political or scientific

State of Maharashtra . In this case, it was held that acceptance of the viewpoints of those whose thinking may not accord with the mainstream are cardinal values which lie at the foundation of a democratic Government. Further, in S. Rangarajan v. P.J.Ram , the Supreme Court approved the observations of the European Court of Human Rights, that freedom of expression protects not merely ideas that are accepted but those that offend, shock or disturb the State or any other sector of the