Exports are down. The price of onions is up. Hrithik Roshan and Kangana Ranaut are fighting. Newspapers these days are full of bad news. But the good news is, the war against sex is going well.

For many years, sex in India was completely unregulated, leading to crimes and misdemeanours such as Khaju Raho and the Kama Sutra. Even the Mughal courts were reportedly quite jolly, until Aurangzeb came and spoilt it all. It was white people who showed us the way. The war against sex in India was originally declared by Queen Victoria. She disapproved. She had specific views on positions, and what to put where. The Indian Penal Code of 1861 reflects this. It gives the police the right to march into your bedroom, and arrest you for indulging in unauthorised hanky-panky. This is the tradition that patriots are defending.

You would imagine that such a legal environment would create a shortage of sex and sexiness. But we Indians are not easily suppressed. Our population has continued to boom. Our sexual habits have proliferated.

It was my singular honour to have received an advance copy of the India Today Sex Survey 2016, which reveals that 75% of urban Indians think that sex is extremely important, while 23.5% of the respondents in Patna fantasise about group sex. Apart from the fact that we should avoid Patna, what this tells us is that the scientist in Jurassic Park was right. Life will find a way. Apparently, some of these ways involve role-play.

Corruption of the youth

Naturally all this has led to reactions from right-thinking individuals. The last few years have been particularly active. Action has been taken against skirt-wearing hussies in Bangalore. Coffee shops where people kiss have been ransacked in Kerala. The Mumbai Police has done stellar work in the area of small and medium-sized hotels, entering bedrooms and picking up couples. In this they were empowered by the Prevention of Immoral Traffic Act, or PITA. They put this together after they realised that there were some loopholes in the Indian Penal Code, through which evildoers were escaping. While unnatural sex was covered, the police were helpless in the face of natural sex.

PITA raises questions about natural sex. The sex may be natural, but is it immoral, or being paid for? PITA allows the police to enter any room, vehicle or cupboard, without a warrant, in order to verify this. This means, for example, that if you and your husband are in a hotel room and the police come in, your husband will have to prove that he is not a customer.

Despite all these efforts, patriotic elements have been unable to make much headway. Sexiness continues to plague the nation. While they were focusing on hotels and cafes, Sunny Leone slipped in through the backdoor and began corrupting the youth. The wearing of jeans proliferated. Mumbai’s municipal corporation made it compulsory for mannequins to wear underwear, to prevent pollution of minds, but even this did not improve society as much as they had hoped. Meanwhile, Subramanian Swamy has been fighting the emerging threat of free sex Naxalites, who are far more dangerous than Naxalites who pay for it.

Recognising the magnitude of the crisis, the Supreme Court has stepped in. In this respect, the judiciary has not let us down. Despite being understaffed and occasionally weepy, they have found the time to closely examine condom packets, which are busy corrupting morals from the shelves of drug stores across the nation. Even as we speak, somewhere nearby, a little boy has just stopped gaping at the hot lady on the packet, and discovered, to his joy, a balloon inside.

The big guns

How did the Supreme Court get involved? Alarmed by the rise in sexiness, public-spirited citizens requested the Madras High Court in 2008 to ban such packets, along with their advertising, because they were against Indian culture. The Madras High Court upheld their plea, but the manufacturers appealed, and the Supreme Court stayed the order. After examining the packets carefully, the Supreme Court has now asked the Attorney General of India to do the same, and recommend steps. The next hearing is on June 8. On this day, once he has studied the condom packets thoroughly, the Attorney General will give his opinion.

I’m sure you are as relieved about this as I am. The war against sex is now being fought at the highest levels. Meanwhile, in other good news, the sex fiends of the Jawaharlal Nehru University are being thoroughly exposed. An official report filed by select faculty members has revealed that prostitutes are being hired as canteen workers, who are luring female students into their sex rackets. Sexual activity is widespread, despite so much alcohol consumption. I was a little surprised by this. I had no idea that communists have so much sex. I am looking at Sitaram Yechury with new respect.

My only concern is with the mixed signals. We Hindus have been asked to have more children, because our entire way of life is in peril. Under these circumstances, you would expect the government to be encouraging us, by providing sexy lighting and music that gets us in the mood. There are precedents. The recent Jiyo Parsi programme was designed to encourage Parsis to get jiggy more often, using lines such as “Isn’t it time you broke up with your mom?” But they are not doing this. Instead, they are suppressing sexiness wherever they can find it. If I have understood correctly, we are now expected to think less about sex and have more children, preferably while waving the flag. I don’t want to question senior people, but this plan may require some re-thinking.

Shovon Chowdhury’s new novel, Murder With Bengali Characteristics, does not feature Mamata Banerjee.