What's the deal regarding India and prudishness?

Factual Questions
1

I am working on a review of a film set in India, and I was wondering if Indian sexual mores were as prudish as Bollywood’s output would tend to indicate – i.e., lots of singing and dancing, no sex or nudity. Is there a monolithic “no sex” attitude, or does it vary among classes and regions? Is the Bollywood output misleading about real attitudes aobut sex among Indians?

Anyone who knows the answers of knows of some good links that could answer my question strongly and succinctly, please let me know. The credibility of the adult movie review at an obscure website are on the line here!

2

It’s probably about as accurate as Hollywood is. I’ve worked with lots of Indians over the years and noticed that they shower with their underpants on. OTOH, Mumbai (India’s Hollywood) also has the highest number of prostitutes anywhere in the world.

3
  1. I don’t know who these underpant-wearing showerers are, but that certainly isn’t a prevailing practice.
  2. Bombay is more India’s NYC than its Hollywood. The Indian film industy is generally based there, but filmmaking is not one of the city’s core economic activities.
4

I forgot to add: Bollywood tends to lag behind prevailing sexual mores by about a generation. Its prohibition on kissing on film lasted long after public kissing stopped being outrageous.

You also have to remember that this is the same country that gave the world the Kama Sutra and genital piercing, among other things; it may appear to Westerners that Indians are prudish, but it works in reverse too. The issue is more which activities are taboo here and there, rather than whether all activities are taboo.

5

Well, judging by the population numbers, I’m guessing Indians don’t have much of a “no sex” rule. If they do, it’s not being enforced very well.

My understanding is that Indian culture is traditionally not into public displays of sexuality, but has a no-holds- barred approach to private displays of sexuality. In other words, it’s not so much that they’re prudish as that they’re private.

6

If I may be so forward … under what circumstances were you able to discover that Indians shower with thier underpants on?

7

[QUOTE=Really Not All That Bright]
I forgot to add: Bollywood tends to lag behind prevailing sexual mores by about a generation. Its prohibition on kissing on film lasted long after public kissing stopped being outrageous.[/qoute]

Hollywood lags, too, though not generally by a generation. Probably has to do with the fact that the people in a position to say what goes and what doesn’t in the media are almost always older than the people who are doing all the going and doing in real life.

I was under the impression taht the Kama Sutra was kind of ancient, not really all that relevant to current Indian culture. In much the same way there are those stone carvings on temples that depict shapely men and women engaging in explicit acts of sexual intercourse, the very opposite of modern India to judge by Bollywood.

Didn’t know about genital piercing. Wouldn’t be surprise if they did it in a lot of Neolithic cultures.

8

There’s a difference between “no sex” and “no media or public depictions of sex, nudity or adult facial expressions.” Catholics are the biggest censors in Western culture, but the command for the married is, “Be fruitful and multiply.”

I have heard such claims about Moslem culture as well/ I tend to view them with suspicion. People who repress public expression of sexuality generally don’t exist in cultures with much information about sexuality, because the information tends to get repressed along with the sexy stuff. Their claims of open-mindedness and freedom in private in contrast to public just don’t ring true to me. I don’t know enough to call them liars but I would tend to want some kind of objective evidence before accepting their claims at face value.

9

The (few, brave) Indians themselves who have criticized the prevailing prudishness, attribute it to the lingering aftereffect of British colonialism, in which Victorian prudery was forcibly pounded into their culture, and continues to self-perpetuate long after the British people themselves have mostly gotten over it. The Indian poet and author Dom Moraes, born in Bombay, wrote an essay analyzing this issue for the Indian photographer Prabuddha Das Gupta’s book Women, the first ever Indian book of nude photography, published in 1996. If I get a chance I’ll dig up the essay and post some quotes here because it’s directly relevant to the OP. Dom Moraes is very much in favor of the ancient Indian eroticism famous from the Kama Sutra and the Khajuraho sculptures, and wants to cast off the Victoran hangover.

10

Don’t mean to insult you, but when was the last time you were in Bombay? I was a student at Mithibai for my JC just a few years back, and while people weren’t completely prudish, public casual kissing was taboo. Occasionally, you might have someone do it as a response to a ‘dare’. Maybe it’s changed in the last couple of years, but I wouldn’t count on it.

This country did not give the Kama Sutra. Like most civilizations, there have been plenty of myraid influences over the centuries. Also, like an unified Europe, India is a manufactured political identity, created by a unified opposition to British rule. The continuous migrations and various ethnicities also mean that there is no such thing as a ‘pure’ or ‘proper’ Indian. Contemporary mores have been strongly influenced by the British and the Muslim Timurids before that.

To answer the OP’s questions:

1)Is there a monolithic “no sex” attitude, or does it vary among classes and regions?

Well, any urban upper middle-class under 35 and any urban under 25 will generally have atleast moderately liberal attitudes towards sex. There is a sizeable (and influential) segment of the population who are the functional equivalents of the Puritans. Whenever a particular controversial film comes out, you will read about them and from them, in the papers and elsewhere.

2)Is the Bollywood output misleading about real attitudes aobut sex among Indians?

Similar answer here.

It seems like the classic struggle between an established conservative Puritan faction and a young, disorganized, faceless but growing, liberal youth culture.

11

American living in Jaipur (India) here, and I second II Gyan II’s responses. Public displays of affection between males and females are frowned upon (non-homosexual physical contact—hand-holding, walking “arms around”—between people of the same sex is perfectly acceptable, however).

Premarital affairs seem to be surreptitiously sought by many young people but heavily disapproved by parents. Very Westernized urban sophisticates tend to have a more Westernized “it’s your own business if you want to have sex” attitude, but that’s not the popular consensus. The persistence of arranged marriage, in which the parents are very much involved in the selection of a spouse, means that the mores of the parents’ generation tend to be more influential than in more individualistic Western ideas of romance and matrimony.

As for Bollywood, going to the movies is still very much a family event for Indians, and most parents don’t like to see “adult” scenes in films on that account. There was widespread grumbling about the recent release Murder (which would probably be considered mildly R-rated in the US) because of its sexy scenes (as well as its adultery-themed plot). (Of course, Murder has been a big hit despite (or because of) the grumbling, so you can see that India, like everywhere else, is sort of ambiguous in its response to sex in entertainment.)

Modesty in dress is more conservatively defined here than in the West. It’s not really considered appropriate for women to bare their legs in shorts or miniskirts (or at least, it’s usually done only by very hip urbanites and characters in movies). Tight and skimpy clothing in general is seen as rather improper. Many Muslims, of course, are even more restrictive, with women wearing either the headscarf or the full-body burqa.

I have no idea what attitude people take toward sex, or how much they know about it, once they’re married and socially permitted to have it. I’d tend to agree with EC’s assessment that cultural prudishness is rather pervasive, but it probably doesn’t stop many people from learning to enjoy their private sex lives.

On the flip side, there are many ways in which nudity and physical intimacy are treated much more casually here than in the West. Same-sex strangers will strip down with you in a changing room with nary a blink of an eyelash. Same-sex acquaintances are much more free about touching one another, as I mentioned above. There are no forbidden zones except the genital organs themselves for a (same-sex) masseur or masseuse when giving a massage (something that prudish Westerners like me wish we’d known in advance! :)). Religious ascetics whose principles require ritual nudity, like Digamber Jain monks and some Hindu sadhus, walk around (not that often, though) bare to the air and nobody stares, and their fully-frontally-nude photographs are respectfully displayed in the offices of religious institutions and the homes of devotees.

12

Me too!
/hijack

This bears repeating. A movie is indeed very often a family event, and as such, outright nudity and overt sexuality are strongly discouraged. I would imagine the newer spate of more explicit films has been targeted primarily at the urban, educated, upper middle-class and college-going crowd. In fact, I’ve heard from a friend in India that the movie Murder mentioned by Kimstu, and another one entitled Jism (“Body” in Urdu), were marketed as porno features in quite a few rural centres.

I feel that this answer, though indicative of the general trend, is still somewhat incomplete. There is no denying that the more liberal outlook has increasing acceptance in the urban centres, but this does not go anywhere towards the actual mindset prevalent in India right now. In most non-urban areas, conservative thinking holds sway. Even within urban areas, education and exposure to Western ideas are the prime determinants of whether or not an individual will deem a movie display of sexuality as legitimate and intrinsic to the plot-line. The ‘puritans’ are not a faction; they are the overwhelming majority in India.

To address the OP:
Is the Bollywood output misleading about real attitudes aobut sex among Indians?
Yes and no. The idea that premarital and extramarital sex are socially unacceptable is usually echoed in movies, and this definitely reflects prevalent social mores. At the same time, most Indian parents do not want their youth (especially females) cavorting around trees or in the rain dressed in clingy clothes, and so all Bollywood depictions of such activities go under the category of ‘Guilty Pleasure’.