Redefining Obscenity and Aesthetics in Print

Abstract

In the early twentieth century a moral panic of sorts gripped a section of the British and Hindu middle classes, creating anxieties regarding questions ofsexuality.’ Hindi literature and advertisements make this panic apparent. The creation of a ‘civilised’ and ‘appropriate’ literature paves the way for a new kind of aesthetics, and for the fashioning of a modern collective Hindu identity. At the same time, the attempts to cleanse literature of all its perceived obscenities face a serious challenge from more commercial forms of print literature. The sale of erotic, ‘obscene’ and semi-pornographic works, and the publication of advertisements for aphrodisiacs, indicate an increasingly popular demand which feed into female and male sexual fantasies and desires. Such works reveal literary pluralities, and the complex and contested terrain that was Hindi literature.