CARNAL NATION

ContentSutra reports that India's Department of Telecommunications has told all Internet Service Providers to begin blocking Savita Bhabhi, a very popular website that features a comic strip about the sexual adventures of a married woman. N. Vijayaditya, from the office of the Controller of Certifying Authorities, a government agency that has the authority to block websites, said that "there were several complaints" against the site, so the agency took action.

SavitaBhabhi.com launched in March of last year and since then has become India's 82nd most popular website, according to Alexa.com, making it more popular than the website of the Bombay stock exchange. The site's ratings shot up to 45th place in February right after an Indian newspaper ran an interview with one of Savita Bhabhi's creators, who remains anonymous except for the screen name "Deshmukh." The strip chronicles the erotic adventures of a bored housewife with a workaholic husband; the term "bhabhi" literally means "sister-in-law" in Hindi, but has connotations beyond that. According to Deshmukh: "Bhabhi is the Indian version of a MILF. Though in literal terms it means your 'brother's wife'—that is not the meaning here. For an Indian youngster his first fantasy is normally the newly married hot woman in the neighborhood who is referred to as a hot Bhabhi. Hence it seemed only natural that our hot heroine whom the entire neighborhood lusts after be called Savita Bhabhi." Deshmukh also says that part of the reason for the strip is to take on the high degree sexual conservatism in Indian culture. "One of the reasons for creating SB was to also portray that Indian women have sexual desires too. India is a country which is still sexually repressed and I feel that for it to break the shackles, it is the women of India who are going to have to come out first. We are already seeing that in a way, and hopefully SB will do her bit to help in this revolution."

To many American eyes, the scenarios in Savita Bhabhi may seem very familiar and even stagey. In the first storyline, for example, Savita seduces a door-to-door bra salesman. But in Indian culture, not only is the strip's explicit sexuality taboo, so too is its depiction of a sexually agressive woman who regularly breaks her wedding vows with no consequence other than a pleasant orgasmic afterglow. N. Vijayashankar, a security consultant who has been an especially vocal critic of Savita Bhabhi, registered complaints against the site to the Indian government's Computer Emergency Response Team and the Director General of Police in the state of Karnataka, and claims that the medium is even more damaging than the content: "Cartoons are a more participative medium," he said. "Videos don't do as much damage. When a child is watching a cartoon, he imagines himself as the character. This has a deeply corrupting influence on our youngsters. This, apart from the fact that an Indian name was being used in such an obscene cartoon, is what led me to make the complaint." ContentSutra notes that Vijayashanka offered no scientific evidence for his claim, and that he has no training in psychology.

The laws that allowed the Indian government to ban the Savita Bhabhi website had already been criticized even before the shutdown. ContentSutra points to a column by media critic Sevanti Ninan about amendments to the Information Technology Act which allow the government to block websites without a hearing or appeal:

What can be the basis for a request to block? The Sovereignty or Integrity of India, the Defence of India, the Security of the State, Friendly Relations with Foreign States, Public order, and, for “preventing incitement to the commission of any cognisable offence relating to above.” Apart from the fact that all of the above are open to interpretation, do note the “preventing incitement” bit. In case somebody thinks you might provoke someone to do something, they can block your website.

In response to the blocking of SavitaBhabhi.com, a site called The Save Savita Project has been created to protest the Indian government's censorship and to provide news updates on the fate of the comic strip.

(Via Tom Spurgeon on Comics Reporter)