Obscenity In The Udeshi Case Study

Decency or morality is a ground on which freedom of speech and expression may be reasonably restricted. Decency is the same as lack of obscenity. The right to freedom of speech cannot be permitted to deprave and corrupt the community, and therefore, the writings or other objects, if obscene, may be suppressed and punished because such action would be to promote public decency and morality. Thus, obscenity becomes a subject of constitutional interest since it illustrates well the clash between the right of the individual to freely express his opinions and the duty of the State to safeguard morals. Further the scope of obscenity under the existing law is illustrated in Sections 292 to 296 IPC. But obscenity is one of the most obscure and conflicted

A Bombay bookseller, the appellant in this case, was prosecuted under Section 292 IPC for selling and keeping for sale the well-known book, Lady Chatterley’s Lover, written by D.H. Lawrence. The Supreme Court after going into the common-law history of the obscenity offence, the Court settled upon Cockburn C.J.’s famous ‘Hicklin Test’ , enunciated in 1868, according to which obscenity is something that would “ ..... deprave and corrupt those whose minds are open to such immoral influences, and into whose hands a publication of this sort may fall .... it is quite certain that it would suggest to the minds of the young of either sex, or even persons of more advanced years, thoughts of a most impure and libidinous

Firstly, the courts observed that the works should be considered as a whole and not in individual parts. In Kakodkar case the Supreme Court held that it is the duty of the Court to consider the obscene matter by taking an overall view of the entire work and however obscene the matter may appear to be when considered by itself, the overall literary merit of the book might still make those very passages fall beyond the concept of obscenity. In Abbas case it was held, “it is not the elements of rape, leprosy, sexual immorality which should attract the censor’s scissors but how the theme is handled by the