Movie Star Cited in Criminal Case for Onscreen Kiss

New America Media, News Analysis, Viji Sundaram, Posted: Dec 07, 2006

SAN FRANCISCO -- Bollywood megastar Aishwarya Rai, described by Julia Roberts as "the world's most beautiful woman," committed the egregious sin of kissing her leading man, Hrithik Roshan, in her latest Bollywood movie, "Dhoom 2."

The on-screen kissing scene so irked Shailendra Dwivedi a lawyer from the state of Madhya Pradesh, he filed a criminal lawsuit Dec. 4 against Rai and Roshan, accusing the two of "lowering the dignity of women" and sending the wrong message to India's youth.

"Bollywood actors are conveying vulgarity in the society," Dwivedi told Reuters. "These films cannot be watched with our families, they are so vulgar at times."

A hearing has been set for December 11.

India's censor board, which certifies all movies and is notorious for its prudery, covered itself by releasing the film with a "parental discretion" certificate.

In filing the complaint, Dwivedi invoked one of India's most archaic laws that brands kissing in public an obscenity.

Last year, when an Israeli couple kissed during their marriage ceremony in Rajasthan, they were charged with breaking India's obscenity laws. The couple was asked to pay Rs. 500 ($11), or spend 10 days in jail. They chose the former.

Obviously the 30-year-old Rai has changed her views on kissing. Just a few months ago she appeared on the Oprah Winfrey show. When Oprah asked her if she had ever kissed on-screen, Rai said no and went on to say that although Indians, like everyone else, have a healthy attitude toward sex, they didn't like kissing in public. Later, when called by a reporter on this remark, she said: "I never said I would never kiss, or whatever on screen. I've always maintained I'd cross the bridge when I come to it."

Rai may have crossed the bridge, but many younger Indians have already crossed the line. If law officials in India were to step into a bar or a disco joint in any of India's metropolitan cities after sunset, they can snare hundreds in their priggish nets. Globalization, MTV and ready cash from jobs in call centers have encouraged them to flout their parents' values and have spawned a culture in which kissing, heavy petting and even more "risquÈ" behavior happen on a daily basis in clubs. Stories abound of youngsters working in call centers clogging up their company's toilets with condoms.

It is strange that India still keeps such laws on its books, when it was on its very soil that the art of kissing seems to have originated. According to U.S. researchers, the earliest references to kissing are in India's Vedic texts dating to 1500 B.C. The Kama Sutras, a treatise on lovemaking, devotes 200 steamy passages to smooching.

A historian at UC Berkeley speculates that kissing in the Indian sub-continent began to be viewed as obscene only with the colonization of India by the British, who were soaked in Victorian Puritanism.

Maybe it was only after the Brits came to India and saw the free and easy ways of its natives that they developed their stiff upper lips.



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