CHENNAI, India — A local court in India has ordered government officials and the Google subsidiary in the country to prevent the appearance of porn site suggestions in search results.
The Madras High Court issued the notice as part of a public interest litigation (PIL), the Daily Thanthi reported.
The PIL petitioner, Chennai-based lawyer S. Gnaneswaran, claimed that whenever “a genuine-internet user types anything in Google’s search engine, it suggests some sites related to pornography or other obscene content,” and that this can lead to users accidentally “opening the illegal sites without knowing the contents, and having to face embarrassment.”
Gnaneswaran also alleged that curious minors may open those sites, leading to a negative impact on society.
The local advocate asked the court to direct the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology to act to prevent such porn sites suggestions from showing up in Google search results.
The judges in the case, issued a notice to the ministry and to the local Google subsidiary, giving them two weeks to submit a reply.
As XBIZ reported, India’s Hindu nationalist government, led by Narendra Modhi, has been conducting a “war on porn” along the same lines as religious conservatives in the U.S.
Indian law offers no legal protection for adult content, and the Modhi government has repeatedly geoblocked platforms and sites in the country, claiming they promote “obscenity and vulgarity under the guise of ‘creative expression.’”
The Modhi government also enforces laws against the crime of “depicting nudity and sexual acts.”
Although many of India’s multiple cultures, including Hinduism, have openly depicted nudity and sexual acts for millennia, conservative ideologues in the country support extreme censorship laws against sexual expression. These attitudes originated in the 19th century with imported Victorian notions under the British Empire, which shamed Indians for their openness about sex.
Recent government and media reports in India have conflated both explicit and simulated sex under the crime of “obscenity.”
Main Image: Madras Chief Justice D. Krishnakumar