India censors school sex education booklet

The country that bequeathed to the world the sensuous erotica of the Kama Sutra, is preparing a new manual to teach sex education in schools.

But unlike its racy predecessor, the new version will be bereft of diagrams and will barely mention the phrase "sexual intercourse", after protests from politicians and parents.

The country's health ministry has been forced to delete even mildly graphic references in the manual after religious conservatives reacted with alarm to the notion of sex being discussed in the classroom.

The episode shows that despite India's booming economy and new image as the home of IT companies and call centres, traditional attitudes remain entrenched - not just in the country's rural heartlands, but in its chaotic cities.

Criticism by conservatives of an early draft of the manual led to it being banned outright in nine states. Now the health ministry has come up with a new version which, the minister responsible admits, has been "mellowed down".

"The message remains the same but it is simply being put across in a more sensitive and appropriate way," said Sujatha Rao, who helped draft the new version. "We don't have to do things the same way as in the West. We have to consider our own cultural and social norms."

One of the first elements to be cut was an anatomical flip chart that taught schoolchildren about contraception. All references to homosexuality - a criminal offence in India - were also dropped.

"Sex education is un-Indian," said Ram Madhav, of the Hindu nationalist Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh organisation. "Look at what it has done in the West - divorce, adultery, teenage pregnancies and people having sex as casually as having a Pepsi."

With a population of 1.13 billion and rising, an HIV epidemic that has infected nearly six million, and government studies suggesting more than half of Indian children have suffered sexual abuse, proponents of the manual say proper sex education is desperately needed.

A 2005 survey found 56 per cent of Indian parliamentarians believed the HIV virus could be transferred by sharing clothes or food. In other surveys, men have said that Aids can be cured by having sex with a virgin - or by sprinkling lemon juice on themselves after intercourse.

Source: Telegraph