How BDSM Interacts With Indian Society.

BDSM In India: A Community In Context.

Eleven years ago, I went to a café in South Delhi to meet a group of BDSM-practioners I had encountered on a website called Fetlife. Fetlife is the largest global, social network for people who are into BDSM or other fetishes. The event was called a munch. A munch is a playful term used to describe a meeting where a group of fetishists congregate to talk, hang out, drink and of course, munch on some food. It was a pleasant event, there were around thirty people, of which only a handful were women, but the environment felt safe. There were jovial discussions and everyone made me feel welcomed into the group. The group that organised that event, and continues to organise munches across the country, The Kinky Collective, recently hosted India’s first National Kink Convention in Goa, a three-day event that included panels, demos for whipping and needle-play, rope workshops and much more. While this may have been the first convention, kink has been blowing up for a bit. 

The last munch I attended was very different from my first. There were dozens of women and the environment was more of a raucous celebration than a sit-down discussion. Earlier this year, Vaga* (31) who is another member of the Kinky Collective organised a kinky and queer film festival called Erotic Edge in Mumbai and Pune. In Delhi, Bangalore and Mumbai, there have been numerous private events ranging from kinky Christmas parties to rope workshops to all-women play-parties and playshops. Whether you like it or not, kink has arrived. BDSM is on its way to the mainstream. Well, so long as you live in a big city anyway. 

“I organised a munch in Jaipur when I lived there,” says Taran*, 41, “Only five people showed up and they were all men, one of them started stalking and harassing my partner after the event to the point that she had to block him and change her listed location. I didn’t do any other munches in Jaipur after that. We are not there yet.” 

As is conventional for most forms of sexual liberation in India, it exists in pockets (of privilege) and BDSM is no exception. While kinky people definitely exist all over the country, the practise of healthy, safe and consensual kink, as is professed by the entire codified kink community, is still out of reach for the majority of the population. Fetish is still viewed as a dirty, unhealthy thing by the community at large, and even by mental health professionals. Certainly, in my experience with psychotherapists and psychiatrists, my sexual proclivities have been explained as Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) more often than not, but perhaps this is changing. The Kinky Collective has also organised workshops on kink-awareness for mental health professionals over the years. 

“It’s definitely different now with regard to changes in allies, there used to be so much resistance,” says Jaya, 59, a member of the Kinky Collective, “Even five years ago, there were renowned doctors who were so kink-negative and convincing them that BDSM was not violence was difficult, the workshops we host now, the attitude is different, the participants are more open-minded.” 

While a shift in the perception towards fetishism is welcome, and aided by the fact that the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders 5 (DSM 5) has declassified sadism and masochism as mental disorders, there is still a need for caution exercised by mental health professionals.

“The way we see it now is that a fetish is not inherently a negative thing,” says Saumya Trighatia, 34, a graduate of NIMHANS who runs the Therapy Terminal, “Even with BDSM, it’s not the act as much as the motivation for it that has to be evaluated. Some people can practise their fetish in a healthy way, for others it may be a sign of something else. As a therapist one must be able to see the nuances.”

In professing for BDSM and its acceptability, we often forget to represent the truth we all see and struggle with in our experiences. It’s natural, as with any persecuted subculture, that the primary responsibility and priority of the practitioners is to battle for acceptability, which would be harder if we revealed the cracks in our own systems, but fetishism is inherently transgressive, so its practitioners are also more likely to have open conversations about the difficult things. Every member of the community, has struggled with the morality of their sexuality, and sometimes the struggle continues even after immersion into the community and validation from the people around us. 

“There are still some elements of my sexuality I struggle with,” says Stree*, 33, a newly-inducted member of the Kinky Collective and founder of Mumbai’s Kink Chapter, “Like the porn I watch is all focused on public molestation and I can’t get aroused unless it is (believable as) real. I was molested a lot when I was younger and that is how I learnt sexuality, so it is still at the heart of my kink.” 

For many people, myself included, trauma and link do intersect, but that is not a good enough reason to condemn the practise altogether. The complexity of sexuality and the ways in which it is informed by the socio-sexual script is a welcome addition to the conversation because it only adds to the layers through which we consider the safest approaches towards expressing our fetishes. After all, sexuality and fetishism do not exist in a vacuum and society as it exists in its patriarchal form shows up even in our bedrooms. 

“There is a great influence of the patriarchy,” says Vaga, 31, “Out of ten people, eight are acting out of repurposed patriarchy. There are mainly male dominants and female submissives, and more often than not, the things they want from their submissives are the same things society demands from women — don’t go out late at night, dress sexy only for me, report your actions, let me guide your career. There is no transgression there, only the same old patriarchy.” 

In my experience, as a submissive masochist, I have encountered several people who attempted to push me in this direction. Often, even calling out my specific fetishes as unhealthy and worrying, and attempting to rescue me from a path of alleged self-destruction. For over a decade, I have written erotica and social evaluations of kink under a pseudonym and several years ago, at a munch, I encountered an older woman who pulled me aside to tell me that she feels sorry for my mother because if her daughter lived her life the way I live mine, she would worry constantly. Even within the community, judgement of one another prevails, we operate under the established edict “your kink is not my kink and it’s okay” yet that is not enough to eradicate the internalised bias we bring into the community as members of society. However, judgement from within the community is hardly the greatest threat to the freedom to practise your sexuality. Every single erotic novel I have ever published has been banned in India or refused distribution for the nature of its content, relegating me to a largely international audience. I have received threats and been socially ostracised for writing about kink under my real name. That kind of muffling of free speech is expected of a country where we can hardly criticise our government anymore, but it is more telling of the threats that afflict the practitioner of kink outside of the safe-spaces we create. 

“When I was getting divorced, my sexuality, which I had practised with my partner in a private, consensual space was made public to the court and my employers as perversion and abuse,” says Taran, “The safety we feel in a community is an illusion, every single one of us is just one malicious actor away from being exposed and having our lives turned upside down. I could have lost my job because of this, I could have lost custody of my child, it’s not all fun and games. These conversations are largely absent from the community.” 

Legally-speaking, there is no law that bans the practise of BDSM in India, but this is largely due to the conservation sensibilities of Indian law in which the consideration of this possibility has been precluded. 

“Technically you can consent to being beaten and tied up and there is no law that will persecute you,” says Sumit Chander, a Supreme Court lawyer who runs a law firm in Delhi, “However, if you get injured and go to a hospital, they will be obligated to report this to the police and you will probably have to lie about how you sustained the injury or they may register a case. Furthermore, in divorce cases or custody cases, where in retrospect the issue is reframed as non-consensual, it could be grounds for cruelty. Essentially the absence of the law is sometimes beneficial and sometimes damaging, we should push for the formation of a law that empowers and protects.” 

The push for protection is vital. As of now, of the dozens of women I know who have had their consent violated, been stalked, attacked or assaulted, none have ever been able to report it to the police for fear of being implicated and outted. Most women who are victimised tend to just leave the community, often because the perpetrators are people who have been long-standing members or have power in the community. 

“I was violated, blackmailed, outted to my children and doxxed,” says Henna*, 40, “There was nothing I could do. No one in the community stood by me and even if they had, what could we have done? He was known to everyone and respected, I was just a newbie. I left because there was nothing else to do, it became a painful space.”

As is the case in any nascent sub-culture, the norms around consent, structure and redressal processes are still being formed, but the stench of victim-blaming and silencing infects the kink community as it does any other, even when it comes to women supporting other women. 

“On the face of it, it’s all rainbows and unicorns, we all say we want to support other women,” says Stree*, “However when the allegations are about our partners, our friends, people we know, then that support goes missing.” 

While more non-cis male leaders have emerged in the past few years, there is still a dearth of adequate women leaders in the community which sometimes ties into the overwhelming presence of women as bottoms, and the stereotype that bottoms cannot be leaders. As one of the existing afab community leaders, Stree says it is not just a matter of space. 

“I would say nothing is stopping women from taking leadership positions,” she insists, “There is a lack of will. We also run a womxn’s kink group but when we were looking for moderators for it, no one wanted to take the responsibility.” 

Whether it is a matter of will, choice or privilege, it is true that taking the responsibility to organise events and manage people can take its toll and prove difficult. There are myriad challenges to face, safety to consider, spaces to secure, finances to manage and interpersonal politics to contend with. With the increasing popularity of kink, especially in big cities, the number of aspirants who want to participate has exploded, but the number of event organisers and community leaders have remained the stable and the same. This has given rise many alternatives groups, telegram channels, Instagram pages and individual actors. Some of that is wonderful and some of it is a little dangerous. 

“The acceptance and understanding of kink is very important, that is our goal, I have been dedicated to this goal for years” says Jaya, “But it’s also dangerous with all these new people coming in, you want people to be safe and not take things so lightly or equivocate them with rough sex.” 

Whether it is inside or outside the formalised community, it is difficult to establish the credibility of teachers, leaders and other parties. While professional accreditations as doctors, lawyers or therapists extend a certain level of trust, most members of the kink community, including myself, are self-taught in matters of kink, and most of our teaching is experiential. Outside of a society that offers qualified researchers and professionals who can provide insight and guidance, that is the best we can do. Events like Kink Con and workshops on safe-play are helpful steps forward, but ultimately it’s a community that feels safer on the inside, than it looks from the outside.