Akash Narwala is like any other 16-year-old, and yet he is a bit different from his peers.

Narwala, who lives in Kota in Rajasthan, has filed a public interest litigation petition with the Supreme Court of India seeking a complete ban on porn sites. That makes him the youngest anti-porn activist in the country, and perhaps in the world.

Like other kids his age, he’s in school in the morning — he is a Class XI student at Vidhyanjali Academy in the arts stream — and goes for coaching classes in the evening. When I call him at 7pm in the evening, Narwala has just finished attending his coaching class. “Can we talk once I reach home,” he asks.

Later, during a chat with FactorDaily over the phone, he talks about the problems plaguing India — the insurgency in Kashmir, the crumbling education system, and crime against women.

At the heart of “crime against women”, Narwala thinks lies addiction to pornography. “Look at what is happening in schools and colleges. Look at the children who are in the fourth and fifth standard… many of these kids start watching porn from that age,” he tells FactorDaily.

So, when did this activist start? Pretty young, it seems.

Narwala was just 11 when he started what was called the Ashalilta Mukt Bharat Sanghatan (pornography free India), a group which wanted to put an end to porn surfing in the country. His family and well-wishers at that time advised him to hold his mission till he was a bit older.

But two incidents had shaken and shocked him. The first was of a friend, a meritorious student, getting addicted to watching porn featuring children, and raping a girl. He doesn’t want to name his friend, who has just been released after serving two years of juvenile custody.

The other incident happened in his neighbourhood, a few steps away from his house. “We used to call him uncle,” Narwala said. One day he killed his daughter. “Later the police found out that he had been raping his daughter for eight months, and when she revolted, he killed her… The police found out that he too watched child porn,” he added.

Narwala had no option but to start young. “The time has come,” he says, to take the right action. He is inspired by Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani women’s education activist, who is also the world’s youngest Nobel Prize laureate.

In the past couple of years, he has written more than 50 letters to the Prime Minister, chief ministers of all states including Rajasthan, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh and Gujarat, local politicians and other outfits to help him in his mission of getting pornography banned. No one cared or responded to him.

So, he thought of taking the legal course. Narwala has filed a petition with the help of Kamlesh Vaswani, an advocate at Indore high court who had filed a petition in the Supreme Court in 2013 for banning of porn sites. The PIL had led to a temporary ban on porn sites in 2015, with the apex court had ordered internet service providers to ban 857 such sites across India, but it’s easier said than done.

India’s internet usage is growing very fast — we’re already at 400 million users. Till about a year ago, 70% of data consumption in India was because of pornography, which means the genre generates huge data revenue for internet service providers and telecom companies.

“It is an industry that makes crores,” said Narwala. “The companies won’t shut it down… so we went to the court, that’s our only hope.”

He points out to a Google Trends report released last year, where six Indian cities ranked in the list of top 10 cities engaged in porn search. Animal porn was most searched in Pune, New Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore. The highest number of searches on “child sex” came from Unnao, a small city in Uttar Pradesh with a population of 3.1 million.

Vaswani is impressed by what Narwala has achieved at his age. “I didn’t believe him in the beginning, but the kind of work he has done for acid attack victims is great. He has worked a lot more than I can for the ban on pornography… He is very determined,” says Vaswani.

Narwala comes from a humble background. He lost his father when he was just six months old. His mother works as a sweeper in Kota’s municipal department and his elder brother runs a gym in town.

His elder sister, Jyoti, 20, supports him in his mission. She runs a non-profit, non-political foundation called Dushkaram Mukt Bharat (an India free of ills). “The foundation’s main aim is to make India rape free,” Narwala says.

Meanwhile, he has recently again written to PM Narendra Modi for support. He has 100 people working directly with him on his mission. He’s also sought support from Ramdav Baba, children’s right activist Kailash Satyarthi, Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the US-based Anti-pornography organisation, among others.

Narwala is happy that his mission is taking shape, although it may take time. When asked if his friends make fun of him, pat comes his response. “I don’t know what media people think, but my friends support me, my family supports me, how does it matter who laughs at me,” he says.

What matters is the cause. “India has the second largest country in terms of internet users, and the ban can become an example for the whole world to follow,” Narwala says.

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