[teitoklien]

India’s ban wasn’t legislative, it was done by the supreme court.

It has one of the most weirdest and also defacto the most powerful supreme court globally by authority.

It can pursue its own laws, legislate them, overturn even laws passed by supermajority in parliament if it doesn’t agree with it and thinks it’s not what original constitution makers would’ve wanted.

The Court can take up cases on its own (suo motu) without any petition being filed. This allows it to respond to media reports, letters, or social issues — an almost unheard-of power in most democracies.

I don’t think indian society or gov should be blamed for banning adult content, supreme court by itself passed the law and gov didn’t wanna contest it as they didn’t feel the point to spend political capital to reverse it.

India is the origin of kamasutra texts after all and isn’t that sex negative as you might think ( it has the highest population for a reason)

[abdullahkhalids]

Pakistan also has had an extremely powerful supreme court - though mostly acting on the behest of the military establishment. It has the same suo moto powers. It has over time effectively rewritten parts of the constitution, deposed prime ministers on the shoddiest base, forced the parliament to reverse parts of a constitutional amendment after it had passed almost unanimously. One supreme court justice raided a hospital at one point, to talk about acting like an executive. Though that might be over now after a recent constitutional amendment.

I am no legal historian, but I would assume this has something to do with how the British set up the courts.

[teitoklien]

Nope it’s not just power that builds decent stabilizing systems but how people/their culture use that power. India’s unusual supreme court stabilises it from executive overreach or other risks because its court judges control their own elections and are far more liberal than indian society or its politicians so it tends to use its extra powers to stabilize rather than compromise the system.

I do agree what you said shows the risk of such systems and powerful courts if created in a vacuum without considering who’ll control it.

Pakistan uses those powers to do the exact opposite of what indian courts would ever do. Also it’s also because in pakistan military is an independent political actor that serves its own interest unlike in India where military is toothless and just operates on politicians diktats often literally at times instead of following intent.

Indian courts also cannot execute on its laws or fund its own budgets or laws. So even if it creates laws it only does ones it knows that parliament wouldn’t resist too heavily and will actually enforce it for them to avoid a constitutional crisis . Indian courts are deeply afraid of ruling parties especially if they have more authoritative leanings or are more organised.

In pakistan the military helps courts finance and execute on stuff superseding the parliament which is why it’s a corrupting force. In India , parliament under union home minister strongly controls over internal security matters and the police forces with prime minister and his cabinet controlling the military.

it’s not because of british court system, british never had such courts nor is it even a republic the british system is more similar to a constitutional monarchy with a powerful parliament.

India is a republic UK is a democratic constitutional monarchy hence it’s called a kingdom Pakistan is just run by the military most of the time and by elected leaders some of the time. so it’s a system that oscillates between dictatorship and majoritarian democracy (not a republic)

but yea supreme court cannot depose prime ministers in india. india set its own checks and balances out of pure fear of the consequences of what happened in pakistan. it still doesn’t fully trust its military to this day. out of fear of pakistan’s case and intentionally keeps regional ethnic regiments to avoid the military from ever unifying or working together.

[gjsman-1000]

> India is the origin of kamasutra texts after all and isn’t that sex negative as you might think ( it has the highest population for a reason)

I think you’re making a mistake here. It is completely possible to be appreciative of sex, and hate pornography. Even in the US, “Feminists Fighting Pornography” was a powerful cultural force for almost 2 decades.

Only in the Western world is “pro sex” = “pro pornography” in most people’s minds. Everywhere else, these are separate issues, with pornography bans actually being from a pro-sex cultural position (I.e. it shouldn’t be commoditized online).

[teitoklien]

I know for a fact they don’t hate pornography, i’ve been around their culture. They banned it because the judges felt like it.

There were no major protests to ban it, no government ongoing policy, nothing. It was just done because the court felt like it.

People were indifferent after that too, gov didn’t even comment, praise or shun the court. Life just went on and people just used vpns, gov doesn’t even care and doesn’t even enforce the ban outside of the 100 major urls and domain the supreme court itself decided and never revisited it.

India’s supreme court is extremely unusual compared to other countries, it’s as powerful as the executive branch if not more, the legislative branch have no say in electing supreme court judges the previous judges elect the next ones.

it just uses its power very sparingly out of fear that the legislative branch might come after their powers if they use them too much.

banning a few major porn sites, banning electoral bonds (india’s version of superpac), creating new right to privacy laws without consulting the parliament (because the court feared gov isn’t taking digital privacy seriously enough), legalise lgbt rights without any parliament input as it felt it needed to protect those citizens freedoms and rights to self identify and form their own families with legal protection.

are some places where the court has used its ultimate powers

I personally like India’s supreme courts, they are partially the reason why india is relatively stable compared to other south asian nations. Overall they use their super powers extremely responsibly and sparingly. Accounting for both political environment and balancing it against the long term interest of the nation’s citizens

[AnthonyMouse]

> Only in the Western world is “pro sex” = “pro pornography” in most people’s minds. Everywhere else, these are separate issues, with pornography bans actually being from a pro-sex cultural position (I.e. it shouldn’t be commoditized online).

The general problem is that when pornography bans are passed, they're characterized as being against for-profit hardcore pornography, but then they're worded broadly enough to also cover everything from sex education to medical depictions of human anatomy to actual human beings flirting with each other on the public internet with no profit motive, and then enforced against any of those things according to the whims of government officials.

Or worse, the law is written in such a way that it puts liability on third parties who then aggressively ban those things to avoid potential liability whether or not the law should or would have been enforced against them.

[IAmBroom]

No, the general problem is the government interfering in a natural right of humans. If someone wishes to pursue happiness in some way that doesn't meaningfully harm others, they should be able to.

Moreover, there may be positive social benefits from it; more permissive pornography laws are associated with lower sexual violence in the population.

[IAmBroom]

Only in your mind is "pornography" not a part of "sex". "Pro sex" doesn't mean "only the plainest sex imaginable", any more than "human rights" mean "to those people whom I like".