India

Public rope teaching in India is recent, and the sources found for this overview document it mainly through one project. How rope reached India and the rest of Asia is told in Kinbaku in Asia-Pacific.

Kink communities first

In India, rope appears within wider kink communities. In April 2023 the Kinky Collective, a group that promotes kink and BDSM culture in India, held what Homegrown called the country’s first Kink Con, a three-day festival in Goa with demonstrations on skills, safety, consent and negotiation. Later that year The Established reported that the same collective was screening films about rope bondage and shibari in Kolkata and Bengaluru, and quoted a Bengaluru organizer who said local groups mostly held munches and had run one rope workshop.

One project in several cities

In 2025 The Nod profiled Amiya Bhanushali, a Mumbai artist who learned rope over about three years from online teaching, community events and the kink scenes of Mumbai and Bengaluru. She launched Silly Hands Shibari in 2024; the magazine thought it was likely the only professional rope studio in India. She gives private sessions in Mumbai and has taught workshops in Gurgaon, Bengaluru and Hyderabad, and she runs an online community of about 250 members where consent and boundaries are discussed. The Bengaluru guide follows the project’s workshops, jams and life-drawing mornings in that city.

How the teaching is framed

Bhanushali told The Nod that her practice is not sexual and that sessions are meant to help people feel their bodies. She wants it to be a safe space for LGBTQ people and for thin, fat, disabled and neurodivergent bodies. The press coverage cited here is in English.

For the difference between a jam and a class, see Rope jams, munches and salons, and for advice on joining rope events in another city, see Rope when you travel.