“Literature of the Muck-Heap” Vs Scientia Sexualis: Sexology, Obscenity and Censorship in early to mid-Twentieth Century India

Abstract

The article focuses on the relationship between sexology, censorship, and obscenity in early to mid-twentieth-century India. Sexology emerged as a popular field in early twentieth-century India and came to be embroiled in ongoing debates on obscenity and censorship. Indian sexologists were charged with obscenity which initiated a larger discourse on the limits of obscenity and whether sexology could be exempt from obscenity charges. The article concentrates on three different sexologists- R.D.Karve, N.S. Phadke, and Abul Hasanat, each of whom exemplified a unique perspective or strategy on negotiating obscenity charges and censorship. The article makes two arguments. First, it shows how sexologists like Hasanat and Karve participated in a discourse of obscenity and appealed to the British colonial state to make a qualitative distinction between sexology and other sexual literature. It argues that the state, however, did not decide on obscenity charges solely based on the content of a text.  Instead, it was factors like the circulation and audience of a text which emerged as the more important benchmarks during obscenity convictions. Both these factors were significant elements of the Hicklin test, a legal measure originally devised in England in 1868 as a test against obscenity, which now emerged as the standardized test for obscenity in colonial India. Second, the article also shows how obscenity convictions and censorship ironically contributed to the further popularization of the field of sexology as well as the sexologists themselves. The article reveals how the wide publication of the obscenity trials of Karve in newspapers as well as the strategic utilization of the international censorship of Phadke's seminal work Sex Problem in India as a marketing tool aided this process of popularization.