Morning MEDtalks with Dr K K Aggarwal 

June 24, 2018

Morning Health Talk:

New Delhi, June 24, 2018:

KERALA HIGH COURT HELD THAT IMAGE OF MOTHER FEEDING THE BABY IS NOT PRURIENT OR OBSCENE: In the matte title “Felix MA versus P. V.  Gangadharan, Writ Petition No. 7778/2018”, the Hon’ble High Court of Kerala at Ernakulam has vide judgment dated 08.03.2018 has held that the image of the mother breast feeding the baby is not prudient or obscene.

The writ petition was filed by the petitioner against the cover page of the magazine depicting a mother feeding her baby exposing her bosom.

A Malayalam magazine, Grihalakshmi had published the image in a bid to normalise the idea of breastfeeding children. The cover image featured a woman model breastfeeding a baby, with a caption which translates to “Don’t stare, we have to breastfeed.

According to the petitioner, it offends Sections 3(c) and 5(j), III of Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act and Rules, as well as Section 45 of the Juvenile Justice Act. He has also roped in Sections 3 and 4 of Indecent Representation of Women (Prohibition) Act, 1986, and Article 39(e) and (f) of the Constitution of India.

The Hon’ble High Court of Kerala held that:

3. “Shocking one’s morals” is an elusive concept, amorphous and protean. What may be obscene to some may be artistic to other; one man’s vulgarity is another man’s lyric, so to say. Therefore, we can only be subjective about Ex. P1 magazine cover depiction.

4. We do not see, despite our best efforts, obscenity in the picture, nor do we find anything objectionable in the caption, for men. We looked at the picture with the same eyes we look at the paintings of artists like Raja Ravi Varma. As the beauty lies in the beholder’s eye, so does obscenity, perhaps.

5. Even the sections relied on by Felix fail to convince us that the respondent publishers have committed any offence, much less a cardinal one, affecting the Society’s moral fabric, and offending its sensibilities.”

However, before parting with the case, the Court indulged in a brief discussion on the subjective nature of concepts such as morality and obscenity, noting that,

“The earliest case to book judicial bounds to nebulous concept of obscenity was Regina v. Hicklin decided by the House of Lords in 1868. Justice Cockburn, in that case, defined the test to be whether the tendency of the matter, charged as obscenity, is to declare incorrect those whose minds are open to such immoral influences and into whose hands a publication of this ought may fall. Indeed, obscenity is a weapon of cultural regulation. Either the U.K. or the U.S.A. or India, for that matter any common law Country, one other shape the entire jurisprudence of obscenity: Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D.H. Lawrence.

We cannot, as a nation—people of all shades of faith and belief— afford to chain ourselves to the past, glorious it may have been. That glory, in fact, was a change and almost an abomination for those living then. Only from the prism of the present, that past appears to be glorious. Who knows what we detest now, as our ancestors did then, as decadence may be its very glory, viewed from a distant tomorrow. No nation desiring progress could afford to have its people chained to the past. Even water stagnant stinks, flowing fascinates. As Steven Pinker observes, “[C]ultural memory pacifies the past, leaving us with pale souvenirs whose bloody origins have been bleached away.”

Indeed, the Supreme Court has been frequently called upon to examine the nuances of this nebulous ‘obscenity’: Chandrakant Kalyandas Kakodar Vs. State of Maharashtra; Samaresh Bose Vs. Amal Mitra, and Khushboo Vs. Kanniammal. In all these cases, it has progressively relaxed the rigours of the standards concerning obscenity and immorality. Pertinently, Kushboo echoes Justice Brandeis’s view in Whitney v. California that the remedy for falsehood is ‘more speech, not enforced silence’.

In Aveek Sarkar Vs. State of West Bengal, the Supreme Court, perhaps for the first time, abandoned Hicklin test. Citing the examples of several countries where Lady Chatterley’s Lover had been held not to be obscene, the Court held that the Hicklin test is not the correct test to be applied to determine what is obscene. Instead, the Court cited the 1957 American case of Roth Vs. United States 21. It then went on to observe thus: A picture of a nude/semi-nude woman, as such, cannot per se be called obscene unless it has the tendency to arouse feeling or revealing an overt sexual desire. The picture should be suggestive of deprave mind [SIC] and designed to excite sexual passion in persons who are likely to see it, which will depend on the particular posture and the background in which the nude/semi-nude woman is depicted. Only those sex-related materials which have a tendency of ‘exciting lustful thoughts’ can be held to be obscene, but the obscenity has to be judged from the point of view of an average person, by applying contemporary community standards.

On this point, whether Aveek Sarkar is the first case to veer away from Hicklin test, Abhinav Chandrachud, in an equally-illuminating book, Nation of Rhetoric, presents an alternative view. According to the learned author, the Hicklin test was formally abandoned by the Supreme Court in that case. But, in truth, courts in India had repeatedly modified, he goes on to observe, the Hicklin test and the judgment of the Supreme Court in Aveek Sarkar did not modify the Hicklin test any further than what the court’s previous judgments had already done.

Nevertheless, post Aveek Sarkar, we have the “Contemporary Community-Standards test,” a test adapted from Roth, and it represents a shift from the old ‘tendency to deprave or corrupt’ test to whether ‘the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest.’ Granted, even this newfound test was soon abandoned. In Memoirs v. Massachusetts, and in Miller v. California. Miller, in fact, the US Supreme Court has refined the obscenity test and introduced the patent-offensiveness test.

We travel no further. We reckon Aveek Sarkar squarely answers the petitioner’s allegation. Going by the contemporary community standards —and without troubling ourselves with patent offensiveness—we may observe that, given the picture’s particular posture and its background setting (mother feeding the baby), as depicted in the magazine, it is not prurient or obscene; nor even suggestive of it. We, therefore, dismiss the writ petition.”

(Dr KK Aggarwal and Ira Gupta)

Early detection of Rheumatoid arthritis

The presence of at least five dominant B-cell receptor (BCR) clones in peripheral blood can predict short-term onset of rheumatoid arthritis. The blood test for people at risk for rheumatoid arthritis can identify those who will develop the disease within 3 years.

(Ann Rheum Dis. 2017;76:1924-1930).

First cases of human West Nile virus in 2018 confirmed

A Chicago resident has been confirmed as the first person in Illinois this year to have contracted mosquito-borne West Nile virus, according to the Illinois Department of Public Health. California public health officials have said they believe the cases will increase and precautions remain important. The virus is passed on through the bites of Culex Pipiens mosquitoes, also known as house mosquitoes. After the virus is transmitted, one out of five people infected could experience symptoms such as fever, muscle aches, headache and nausea for a few weeks or months. In rare severe case, the symptoms are meningitis, encephalitis or death. Mosquitoes become infected with the West Nile Virus by biting birds that may have contracted the virus.

More on herpes virus Alzheimer’s link

The human herpesvirus (HHV) may play a role in the development and progression of Alzheimer’s disease. Investigators analyzed large data sets of postmortem brain tissue and found that for patients with AD, levels of HHV-6A and HHV-7 were twice as high as in persons without AD. There’s a reasonable chance that antiviral agents will inhibit the production of these herpesvirus strains, and a clinical trial of antivirals can be initiated in those patients. The study was published on June 21 in Neuron.

Dr KK Aggarwal
Padma Shri Awardee
Vice President CMAAO
President HCFI

Stay informed with the latest news from HealthySoch. Sign up today for exclusive insights and updates!

We promise we never spam!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.

Health Tips

Dr. T S Kler Padma Bhushan Awardee
MD, DM, MRCP, FRCP(U.K), FACC, D.Sc
Chairman – Fortis Heart Institute Gurugram

Precautions to avoid Corona Virus:

  1. Stay home as far as possible.
  2. Wash hands with soap and water frequently.
  3. Keep distance from people even your home members.
  4. Keep atleast 1-2 metres away from anybody coughing.
  5. Don’t touch your face, nose and mouth.

 

Dr. K.K Says

Archives

MonTueWedThuFriSatSun
    123
45678910
18192021222324
25262728293031
       
   1234
567891011
12131415161718
26272829   
       
891011121314
293031    
       
    123
45678910
11121314151617
25262728293031
       
  12345
6789101112
13141516171819
27282930   
       
      1
2345678
9101112131415
16171819202122
3031     
     12
17181920212223
24252627282930
31      
   1234
567891011
12131415161718
2627282930  
       
1234567
891011121314
22232425262728
293031    
       
     12
3456789
17181920212223
24252627282930
       
  12345
6789101112
       
  12345
13141516171819
2728     
       
      1
9101112131415
3031     
   1234
567891011
       
282930    
       
    123
45678910
       
  12345
27282930   
       
      1
3031     
    123
11121314151617
       
28      
       
2930     
       
    123
       
       
       
      1
9101112131415
3031     
     12
3456789
10111213141516
17181920212223
242526272829 
       
  12345
13141516171819
2728293031  
       
      1
23242526272829
3031     
    123
       
    123
25262728   
       
78910111213
28293031   
       
293031    
       
14151617181920
28293031   
       
   1234
567891011
       
   1234
567891011
262728    
       
891011121314
293031    
       
    123
18192021222324
25262728293031
       
  12345
27282930   
       
      1
2345678
16171819202122
3031     
    123
45678910
18192021222324
       
28293031   
       
     12
31      
   1234
       
  12345
6789101112
       
HealthySoch

Don't Miss

Enhancing capacity for laboratory diagnosis for COVID-19 at Beitbridge District Hospital

Author : Tatenda Chimbwanda India healthysoch Beitbridge, Zimbabwe/ New Delhi,

CMAAO CORONA FACTS and MYTH BUSTER : Post Mortem of Lung

Dr K K Aggarwal, President CMAAO The Lancet Infectious Diseases,