DELHI, India — India’s premier pleasure product online retailer and distributor IMbesharam.com is currently developing their first line of made-in-India sex toys, inspired by the subcontinent’s history, mythology and culture that is rich in sexual expression.
Raj Armani, founder of IMbesharam.com, has been hard at work on this project since spring, prompted by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s call for the nation’s business leaders to use the COVID-19 crisis as a growth opportunity and a chance to assert national pride.
“When we heard about it, we realized this is the wind we needed for the fire," Armani told local news site Mint in June.
By December, Mint reported, IMbesharam “aims to launch its first line of male and female masturbators made in, and for, India.”
“They will have India preferences on girth, thickness, color and texture,” said Armani. “Its branding will be synonymous with our Kamasutra scriptures to bring Indian mythology alive in a new avatar.”
The two projected lines will be named “Samaaj” (Society) and “Sanskaar” (Upbringing).
“Because fuck Samaaj and fuck Sanskaar!” Armani joked.
A National Cause
The project taps into current rhetoric about India as a “self-reliant nation” and a “vocal for local” trend.
Current top sellers in IMbesharam’s store are mostly big-name international brands, although India’s unquestionable top “sex symbol,” the Canadian-Indian adult and Bollywood performer Sunny Leone, has long been the main spokesperson for the online store.
But the products continue to be imports, largely from China, and the two large Asian nations are often in tension economically and politically.
“As the economy opens up, and the government pushes for buy-in-India as a sequel to make-in-India amidst tensions with China, e-tailers say they will explore ways to tie up with local manufacturers and launch a range of home-grown products,” Mint reported last June.
India, however, is considered one of the fastest-growing markets for adult products in the world, although stifled by the stigma about talking about sex in the public sphere and lingering sexism about the role of men and women in large segments of Indian life and culture.
A Big Hush-Hush Affair
“For a country renowned the world over as the historic land of Kamasutra and Khajuraho, India chooses to remain awfully secretive about its sex culture that is, at all times, nothing but thriving,” wrote Tanvi Akhauri yesterday in a report for female-focused Indian news site She the People. “But it thrives in the dark underbelly of its people’s warped perceptions of tradition and morality."
“It’s like contraband: always high in demand, exchanged clandestinely, but never ever to be spoken about,” Akhauri continued. “To be treated as if it doesn’t exist and never will. So naturally, sex and everything around it, from smooches to sex toys, is all a big hush-hush affair. And when it comes to women, it’s straight-up taboo, no two ways about it.”
However, Akhauri points out, recent reports, like “a survey by sexual wellness company ThatsPersonal.com, titled ‘India Uncovered: Insightful Analysis of Sex Products’ Trends in India,’ suggest India has seen a whopping spike of 65 percent in the sale of sex toys following the coronavirus lockdown period.”
IMbesharam’s Armani still has to be more careful than his Western counterparts about how he phrases his trade for the local market: “What we sell is a classy collection of products that can be used by adults for pleasure and relief," the website states.
This reticence, Mints points out, is not just due to cultural coyness. Section 292 of the Indian Penal Code “prohibits the sale of obscene objects and has been used for moral policing in the past, although there is no specific reference to sex toys.”
But given the country’s new nationalistic drive, it might be possible for IMbesharam to realize the dream of an all-Indian pleasure product line, perhaps before the end of this year.
“The smart thing to do," Armani told Mint, “is to ride this (swadeshi) wave and manufacture in India."
