Obscurantism rules - Shocking conservatism of Parliamentarians

The Telegraph
April 21, 2009

Editorial

SHOCK VALUE

It is alarming that crucial decisions regarding something as fundamental to human health and happiness as sexuality are taken by leaders of the nation whose thinking on the matter is a dangerous mix of bigotry and ignorance. The Committee on Petitions has recommended that there should be no sex education in schools since this promotes promiscuity and since India’s “social and cultural ethos are (sic) such that sex education has absolutely no place in it”. Headed by the Bharatiya Janata Party’s Venkaiah Naidu, the committee comprises nine Rajya Sabha members from the entire party-political spectrum, and has only one woman in it. The committee’s outrage is directed against the human resource development ministry’s Adult Education Programme. Launched in 2005 and backed by the National AIDS Control Organization, the AEP had focused on safer sex, together with adolescent physical and mental development, for the 14-18 age group. Not only was the committee “highly embarrassed” by the HRD ministry’s PowerPoint presentation on this curriculum, but it has also recommended for this age group an alternative curriculum based on the lives and teachings of saints, spiritual leaders, freedom fighters and national heroes. This would endorse “national ideals and values” and “neutralize the impact of cultural invasion from various sources” with the help of naturopathy, Ayurveda, Unani, yoga and, of course, moral education.

Such a combination of conservatism, chauvinism and sheer irrationality is disconcerting for several reasons. First, emanating from the highest levels of the polity and uniting a diversity of political positions, it shows the extent to which the lives and bodies of some of the most vulnerable members of society remain in the control of the limited understanding and unlimited powers of a few. A blinkered and almost mythological understanding of the lives and sexuality of growing children, generalized to the point of absurdity, underpins such a mindset. The children themselves, as well as the adults who are responsible for their well-being, remain entirely deprived of agency in the making of these decisions and policies.

Finally, the assumptions on which this mindset is founded, and the terms in which they are publicly expressed, are equally frightening. The committee upholds that pre-marital sexual exploration, together with sex outside marriage, is “immoral, unethical and unhealthy”; consensual sex before the age of 16 “amounts to rape”; sex education promotes abusive behaviour in school, among students as well as between teacher and student, and is detrimental to the stability of the family. Perhaps the only hope lies in the fact that these are just nine shockingly regressive individuals trying to control the robustness of millions of sensible Indians.