CYBERSPACE—If you’re an office worker or a college student in India, and you want to sneak in a little internet porn on your lunch hour or study break, you may soon be treated instead to renditions of traditional bhajans—religious Hindu chants—if the developers of a new app in that country get their way.
The app, which currently works only on Windows-powered devices with an Android version in the works, is designed to be installed on computers used by children, office workers, students or anyone who—according to whatever authority figures they answer to—should not be consuming porn online.
The app, which goes by the name Har Har Mahadev, automatically filters out porn sites as well as violent and “vulgar” content online, subjecting users to devotional Indian music in their place, according to the app’s developer, Dr. Vijaynath Mishra of Banaras Hindu University, a practicing neurologist.
"When I first developed this app I had my patients, my children and my students in mind, but now I think this should be made available to the whole world," Mishra said, as quoted by the Asian News International news agency.
BHU’s Medical Superintendent OP Upadhyay applauded his colleague’s work developing the porn-blocking app.
“This is a very good step,” the medical superintendent said. “It will help curb the corrupted mentality being spread in society.”
Currently, the Har Har Mahadev app is capable of blocking access to about 3,800 different sites that the developers have deemed objectionable, due to pornographic content, violence or “vulgarity”—though how they have defined “vulgarity” is unclear.
“Har Har Mahadev” is a Sanskrit phrase that translates loosely as “taking away sorrows.” Mishra said that while the app, now in its beta form, plays only Hindu devotionals, plans are in the works to add songs and chants from other religions to the app.
“For example if a Muslim tries to open then ‘Allahu Akbar' will be played. Similarly, chants of other religion will be loaded as well,” the neurologist said.
