Two surrenders in Goa on the same day have inadvertently reopened an older question concerning sexual autonomy. Tarun Tejpal surrendered following his conviction for rape and sentence of ten years' rigorous imprisonment. The Luthra brothers and another accused surrendered in proceedings arising from the Birch by Romeo Lane nightclub fire.
Behind these developments is exposed a wider contradiction. Sexual dignity is protected through the coercive machinery of criminal law when consent is violated. Yet sexuality is simultaneously displayed, packaged and monetised when commercial opportunity permits it. Goa has become particularly familiar with both propositions.
When consent turns
criminal law
The Tejpal prosecution has demonstrated the extraordinary institutional importance attached to sexual consent. A complaint arising from events at a Goa hotel travelled through police investigation, prosecution and trial. An acquittal was initially recorded by the Sessions Court. It was subsequently reversed by the Bombay High Court at Goa, and imprisonment followed.
The original acquittal and subsequent conviction reveal the difficulty encountered when sexual interaction is reconstructed within a courtroom. Familiarity cannot establish consent. Professional proximity cannot establish it either. Nor can previous correspondence, subsequent behaviour or the absence of conduct conventionally expected from a victim substitute for consent to the particular sexual act.
An imbalance of authority assumes particular relevance where one participant exercises professional influence over another. Sexual autonomy is consequently protected not merely against the unknown assailant, but against exploitation occurring within relationships of familiarity, confidence and power.
Once guilt has been established, proportionality of punishment nevertheless remains a separate jurisprudential question. The State has sought enhancement of the ten-year sentence to life imprisonment. The severity of punishment may legitimately be examined independently from the determination of guilt. Protection of dignity need not require abandonment of proportionality.
When sexuality
becomes capital
A different manifestation of sexuality was displayed within Goa's nightlife economy. At Birch by Romeo Lane, a female performer of Uzbek origin was performing on stage on the night of the fatal fire. The performance formed part of the nightclub spectacle when pyrotechnics were used and the ensuing fire spread through the premises. The commercial principle involved is uncomplicated. Nightclubs do not merely sell beverages. Atmosphere is sold. Exclusivity is sold. Music, spectacle, physical attractiveness and sexual imagery are capable of being assembled into an entertainment product for which substantial amounts are paid.
Sexuality therefore need not appear upon a customer's bill before possessing commercial value. The woman's body consequently acquires an unusual position within this economy. Her appearance attracts attention; attention sustains entertainment; entertainment attracts customers; and customers generate revenue.
Consent to participate does not erase this commercial chain. Neither does sexual display necessarily destroy dignity. What is exposed is something subtler: Sexuality itself has been assigned an economic value.
When appearance
becomes employment
The same question is encountered more institutionally within Goa's casino and hospitality economy.
Young women are routinely placed in customer-facing roles in which grooming, makeup, uniforms and physical presentation become integral to the entertainment environment. The presence of women from Northeast India within sections of this workforce also raises questions concerning migration, gender and the economics of appearance.
A distinction is therefore required between sexual autonomy and economically conditioned autonomy. A woman may freely choose a short skirt. A woman may equally choose heavy makeup or employment within a casino. No loss of dignity follows merely from those choices.
The inquiry changes when access to economic opportunity becomes dependent upon satisfying somebody else's conception of physical desirability.
Consent answers whether agreement was given. Autonomy determines how freely the choice could be exercised. Exploitation identifies who benefits from the conditions within which that choice was made.These concepts cannot conveniently be collapsed into one another.
The contradiction does not terminate at Dabolim or Mopa. Thailand's commercial sex economy has been extensively examined through anthropological and socio-legal research. Bangkok's internationally recognised red-light districts have consequently become part of a transnational tourism economy in which sexuality itself constitutes commercial demand.
For the Indian traveller, an uncomfortable proposition consequently arises. A woman's sexual dignity cannot possess one value in Goa and another after an international flight.
The Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita already recognises the principle of extraterritorial criminality. Section 1(5) extends its application, in prescribed circumstances, to offences committed beyond India by Indian citizens. Citizenship therefore does not invariably cease to matter merely because misconduct occurs beyond Indian territory.
The substantive offence must, of course, exist. Consensual sexual activity between adults cannot retrospectively be converted into rape merely because money was involved or because Indian social morality disapproves of it.
But trafficking, coercion, child sexual exploitation and other criminal conduct cannot be morally sanitised through tourism either. A passport changes territorial jurisdiction. It does not alter the intrinsic value of another human being's sexual autonomy.
Goa's uncomfortable
reflection
The contradiction may finally be observed without resorting to prudishness. Sexual liberation is not the problem. A woman's revealing clothing does not constitute consent. Her employment does not eliminate autonomy. Her willingness to perform does not diminish dignity. Equally, the language of liberation cannot conveniently be invoked whenever commercial interests profit from sexuality while the language of dignity is reserved exclusively for the criminal courtroom.
Goa has constructed an economy in which pleasure is consumed in multiple forms. Nightclubs monetise spectacle. Casinos monetise entertainment. Alcohol lowers inhibitions while filling both private accounts and public coffers. Tourism markets freedom from ordinary restraint.
The criminal law simultaneously insists, correctly, that freedom without consent becomes violation.
The same intellectual consistency should therefore survive beyond the courtroom.
Sexual autonomy cannot be sacred when violated, saleable when advertised, profitable when taxed and somebody else's problem when purchased overseas.
The question confronting Goa is consequently not whether sex should sell. It already does. The more difficult question is what, and whom, society has permitted to be sold with it.
