In 1959, the publishers of Grove Press in USA sued the Post Office for refusing to deliver copies of D H Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover , a book which
had first been published in 1928, but which had been declared obscene in many countries. The trial was a landmark one, throwing up questions over when a book could be considered obscene, when a book could be banned, and whether or not books should be banned at all. The lawyer, Charles Rembar, agreed that the book met the legal definition of obscenity, but questioned whether or not the book nevertheless had any “redeeming social importance”. If it did, then it would fall under the purview of the First Amendment, which guaranteed the protection of free speech.
Finally, on July 20, 1959 (the 50th anniversary of the case was celebrated a few days ago), the Post Office was ordered to lift the
restrictions on the book. While obscenity laws continued to exist in USA, this was a huge victory for free speech.
In 1971, another high-profile obscenity trial took place, this time in the UK. Oz magazine, an irreverent, anti-authoritarian publication, had put out an issue edited by secondary school students, though not marketed
towards them. Among other things, the issue contained a pornographic cartoon strip featuring the character Rupert Bear.
Rupert Bear was a children’s cartoon character who had appeared in the Daily Express for years, though non-English readers would probably know him better from Sir Paul McCartney’s Rupert and the Frog Song video.
The comic strip was given a great deal of prominence in the trial. The schoolboy who had created the strip, 15-year-old Vivian Berger, claimed that he had done it “to shock your generation”, and that in portraying obscenity he did not necessarily feel that he was creating it.
The trial now has additional literary relevance due to the fact that the defence lawyer was John Mortimer, who would later go on to write the Rumpole books. Mortimer felt that the significance of the trial lay in the fact that it stood “at the crossroads of our liberty, at the boundaries of our freedom to think and draw and write what we please”. The Rupert Bear cartoon may have been puerile, but
it was important that people should be able to create, publish and read such a thing.
A few weeks ago, the Indian government banned the Savita Bhabhi website. This was a much talked-about ongoing comic strip documenting the sex life of a fictional Indian housewife. It was determined that the site was detrimental to Indian values (freedom of speech, then, is clearly not an Indian value). Last week, the creator of the site chose to end the campaign to bring the comic back, citing family reasons.
It seems that Savita will not be this country’s Rupert Bear after all. It’s a great pity, because whatever one may think of Savita herself, I would have liked to live in a country where she could exist. India is poorer without her.
— The writer is a student of English literature and a compulsive book buyer. She blogs at http://bluelullaby.blogspot.com
bluelullaby@gmail.com