The Indian Penal Code dictates that any form of public display of affection is a criminal offence if it %u2018annoys%u2019 others or is obscene.
The law has been a topic of hot debate because of its open-ended language and lack of quantitativeness. The penal section (294 IPC) includes the statement %u201Cwhoever, to the annoyance of others%u201D. What may be obscene or annoying to one might not be to the other.
A report by Times of India notes that the Supreme Court has several times mentioned that obscenity changes with time. Courts quantify the level of obscenity in the social context.
In other words, the legality of kissing is in the hands of the society in India which brings in the question %u2018What does society think of PDA?%u2019.
American actor Richard Gere kissed Shilpa Shetty in 2017 as part of an AIDS awareness event in New Delhi. What followed was an arrest warrant being issued against him and people burning his and Shetty%u2019s effigies on the streets of the capital of the nation. What was actually just stage acting that should have been considered a simple %u2018public display of affection%u2019 when seen from the eyes of the society became %u2018sexually provocative%u2019 behaviour.
There is a level of a double standard when it comes to PDA. Two adults who have consented to the %u2018obscene acts%u2019 are taken to court by people who avert their eyes when a woman is harassed or catcalled in the street.
Kiss of love
Even though a large section of the population wants to keep the PDA closeted, the same belief is not shared by the youth of the country.
Kiss of love was a protest that started in 2014 with a Facebook page that went by the aforementioned name which called on the youth across Kerala to fight against the baseless moral policing. The movement received widespread support as more than a lakh people joined the movement and protests were organised in other major cities of the country.
In conclusion, the law that potentially criminalizes kissing in public was written in the 19th century for British India. With society%u2019s dynamism, such laws should also be changed so as to keep with the trends in society.
