[CW: Mention of sex, SA] What happens when Hindu nationalists make a movie about sex positivity...

I usually steer wide off Bollywood movies because I have a deep despise for the industry but I caught a passing glimpse of one of its product that intrigued me in the most morbid way possible. The movie is called OMG 2. It is a spiritual successor to Oh My God!, a 2012 movie. The 2012 movie is about a man who is an atheist because of the corruption entrenched in religious institutions. So God sends an envoy to help him fight said institutions and help him find his faith.

Things have changed a lot in India since 2012. Vulgar Hindu nationalism permeates every fibre of the fabric of reality and the film industry signal boosts this ideology at every opportunity. When the rare movie is not a low-quality romantic-comedy slop or a story of an extremely masculine protagonist that just fights to set things right, it is, at best, a lukewarm and harmless critique of Indian society and at worst just straight-up Islamophobic nonsense. In line with this, the sequel has taken an extremely bizarre route of tackling the lack of sex positivity from a Hindu chauvinist angle. I cannot critique Bollywood as a whole since I keep my distance from it, but I feel compelled to talk about this movie because I cannot wrap my head around it.

Content warning: Mention of sex, masturbation, SA below.

I haven't watched the whole movie because I just can't. But I have seen enough. So I will crib parts of the Wikipedia plot synopsis to paint a picture:

Kanti [...], a staunch devotee of Lord Shiva, owns a shop outside the city's prominent [...] temple. One day, he is called to the hospital and told that his son Vivek [...] was up all night masturbating continuously until he fainted, and consumed multiple Viagra tablets. Vivek's friend explains that an insecure Vivek was bullied about the size of his penis and was told that masturbating will increase it. The biology teacher at school refused to answer Vivek's questions, which led him to shady people and drugs and eventually to the hospital.

Kanti is told by the school chairman [...] that there's a video going around of Vivek masturbating in the school washroom. As this is affecting the school's image, Vivek is rusticated on grounds of obscenity. Kanti's friend, [...] a rich priest at the temple, advises him to leave town as the situation is tarnishing their religious image.

The video reaches Kanti's wife and daughter and their entire neighborhood. They start getting shamed by society. Devastated, Kanti prays to Lord Shiva for help, when a divine power shines in the Temple and a Messenger [...] sent by Lord Shiva arrives.

The premise is nuts. Obviously, sex is taboo topic that adults do not discuss with children in India which results in problems for children growing up. Lots of boys, for example, learn about sex from porn, movies and other media that do a terrible job of conveying the realities of sex.

What's odd, though, is that the movie does not talk about girls at all. The whole story starts and ends with the boy who was tricked into masturbating in order make his dick bigger. Their implied notion of "sex education" seems to be that you should be able to ask your elders about your dick. Girls are completely ignored though. Indian society is extremely patriarchal. When I was in school, it was extremely embarrassing for girls to talk about menstruation for example. India in general is extremely unsafe for women and the reasons behind it can be traced back to how boys are taught to view women when they are young. The movie does acknowledge girls for very brief moments a couple of times but it is pure tokenism. There is a lot to say about this but I am not really an expert so I will leave it at this. This weird way of looking at sex education leads to a very bizarre moment later on in the movie which will say more than I ever could.

The rest of the movie is about the parent, the child and the Messenger judicially taking on the society at large for making sex a taboo topic to discuss.

On to the aforementioned "very bizarre moment", a female sex worker is being questioned by Kanti in the courtroom before the judge. Kanti holds up a couple of erotic idols in front of her and asks her if she knows the sex positions being depicted in them. She confirms. He then asks where she learnt them from, to which she responds that the knowledge was passed down to her by her senior fellow sex workers. He then asks her if she enjoys the sex with her patrons, to which she says no, adding that the men at times cause her physical harm and sometimes even just cry to alleviate their emotional burden. (They decided to portray the men as victims here for some reason.) Kanti then deduces that she does not derive enjoyment because the men are not taught how to deal with women's bodies. If men were taught about sex, she would have at least not been hurt during sex. The phrasing does not make it clear whether he claims she would have enjoyed the sex or not. Either way, this is portrayed as an epically awesome perspective-altering argument.

There is a fair bit of Hindu chauvinism as well because the claim appears to be that Indian (meaning Hindu) culture in the past was open to talking about sex but British colonialism altered this aspect:

When opposed with the fact that he is just promoting vulgarity by defending his son's act, he holds the point in court that the Sanatan Dharma and Indian culture was always inclusive of conversations on sex. He also shows the intimate human art carvings of Ellora, Ajanta, and Khajuraho temples, and quotes multiple books [...] to get his case accepted.

While I do think the colonial past has done incalculable damage to our cultural character, this kind of hearkening back to an idyllic past is typical fascistic behaviour. The Hindu nationalists who worship this imagined past are unsurprisingly extremely regressive when it comes to sex.

This movie is not an obscure B-grade movie either. It is as mainstream as it gets featuring the most prominent contemporary actors. Goddamn I hate Bollywood.