BHU professor's 'Har Har Mahadev' app blocks pornographic sites and redirects user to bhajans and devotional speeches

If the flood of sanskar around us wasn’t already bad enough, the neurological department in a university has launched an app which is designed to block pornographic websites. It will also play bhajans and devotional speeches if one tries to open these websites. [caption id=“attachment_4213945” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Representational image. Reuters.[/caption] Named ‘Har Har Mahadev’, the app has been designed by Dr Vijay Nath Mishra of the neurology department, from the Institute of Medical Sciences at Banaras Hindu University (BHU), reports The Indian Express. This app, which was developed in six months, according to the report, can block 3,800 websites related to pornographic and violent content. This is available on both mobile phones and computers. The name of the app has been inspired by the name of Shiva, a Hindu god who is known to kill social evils, which in this case, according to the BHU neurological department, is pornography. According to Dr. Mishra, this is his attempt to “cure those suffering from porn addiction”. He believes that since the problem cannot be treated, devotional songs like bhajans can bring some change. Moreover, to include other religions as well, it will soon include devotional songs from Islam. They intend to add redirects to inspirational speeches from Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela and Rabindranath Tagore as well. Other than these websites they believe that it can be used to block games **such as _Blue Whale_** as well. It must be noted that downloading the app is a voluntary gesture. Though an earnest attempt to help those suffering from this “ addiction ", it would take a rare breed of person to voluntarily install the app, sanskar may not be everyone’s cup of tea, after all.