Just as Indians were getting used to debating the pros and cons of judicial activism, there has cropped up now something called “judicial indecency”. It is a term that has been used by senior members of the Indian judiciary to describe the results of a rather curious set of acts. Prompted by a public interest litigation filed by a Jaipur resident, a magistrate of the same city has been watching very closely a videotape of the HIV/AIDS awareness gala for truckers held recently in Delhi. He has been concentrating, however, on those few moments that evening when Richard Gere and Shilpa Shetty went on their spontaneous little kiss-on-the-cheek caper, to the great delight of the few thousand people gathered there. But this gentleman of the law has admitted to finding what he calls “the kissing episode” sequence “highly sexually erotic”, as much for the public nature of the act as for Shetty’s evident enthusiasm in “co-operating” with Gere. This has been deemed obscene and un-Indian, even anti-Indian. Hence, Gere has been issued an arrest warrant, and Shetty asked to appear in court with him early in May, after being subjected to a severe round of judicial admonishment for being such a brazen woman. This follows a couple of other legally registered protests in the country, together with the usual breakings and burnings by sundry bigots, mostly from the Hindu Right.

By now, the dreary regularity with which Shiv Sainiks and their brethren get into such acts has made it quite easy to ignore them. But what the phrase, “judicial indecency”, draws attention to is the undermining of the dignity of the law that such reactions cause. Quite apart from the immense waste of time, the profoundly ridiculous light in which this shows up the Indian judiciary and society to the rest of the world cannot really be taken lightly. And this is unfortunate, for it forces people to treat something absurdly unimportant as an issue of national prestige. It is heartening to see, though, that most of India, from the truckers to the Third Page, takes the whole thing as nothing but an affront to sensible people. One “writer” in Mumbai has remarked that even if such a reaction is excessive, Gere and Shetty should have been more careful about their behaviour since they were at an HIV/AIDS event aimed at the advocacy of “safer sex”.

Such a remark — in its combination of bottomless ignorance and displaced sexual resentment — sums up what episodes like this reveal about certain sections of Indian society. That such a mindset fixes on HIV/AIDS to voice its fears is India’s great misfortune, for the grave danger of the Indian campaign falling in the hands of ignorant bigots, some of them invested with a good deal of power, cannot be underestimated. The Indian judiciary’s public indignation at being banalized in this manner is a perfectly justified reaction.