ddancebars

Pritish Nandy

Finally, after 8 long years, the ban on dance bars in Maharashtra is over. The Supreme Court has upheld the Mumbai High Court’s order to squash the stupid, brutal, insensitive ban. Earlier, the Governor too had refused to sign it. But the State insisted on going ahead, rendering over 75,000 young middle class girls jobless and, what’s worse, because of the State’s obscene charges in court and the media, unemployable. The dance bars were described as pick-up joints and the girls, by insinuation, sex workers.

These claims were never proved in any court. But they achieved exactly what the State wanted. The lives and reputation of these hapless girls were instantly destroyed. They became easy targets for criminals and anti-social elements. Many were socially ostracized. In certain neighborhoods, even local political groups began to terrorize them and their families, forcing them to run away. Some of these girls eventually ended up on the streets doing exactly what they were accused of because they had no other option. A few escaped to the Middle East. Many chose suicide.

The pompous, vulgar, moralistic State had, in one stroke, destroyed not just thousands of lives and reputations but in its typically misogynistic fervor, tried to pretend it was cleaning up Gotham city. What they actually did was drive dance bars underground. The parties shifted to private locations and the girls who danced in the bars were now replaced by others who did not just stop at dancing.

I was first taken to a dance bar by a friend of mine, a young American girl who had come to write her PhD thesis on Indian movies. She articled at a local production house and spent her evenings in the dance bars because she loved dancing to Hindi film music. She found these bars quaint, charmingly old fashioned, and, O yes, wonderfully safe. The bouncers who hung around ensured no girl was ever touched. Only currency notes were at times thrown at them in filmy style and those who chose to make friends with customers were advised to do so outside the premises, beyond official duty hours. I am sure some did make friends. But so do girls in any retail premise. To assume that they are thus also retailing sexual favors is stupid and vulgar, typical only of a gross, misogynistic mindset.

Now, after the Supreme Court order, the State will hopefully allow dance bars to reopen. But, from the way they have reacted, permissions will not be easy. Haftas will quadruple. Harassment will continue under other pretexts. I will be curious to see how many bar owners will risk restarting their business. As for the girls, new ones will replace those whose lives were willfully destroyed by moral policing. But what bothers me is that there are still people among us who support such discriminatory bans and rah-rah the brutal system that enforces it. A State that cannot provide livelihood to women should be the last to deprive them of their jobs.

What is funny though is that during these past 8 years the 4 and 5 star hotels have been running their discotheques and night clubs openly. No moral issues were ever raised about girls dancing there. The State did not insinuate they were women of easy virtue even though they were openly dancing with men, often in far less conservative clothes than the bar girls wore. Yet no one ostracized them. No mobs gathered around their homes, demanding they quit the neighborhood. A new and vulgar caste system was deliberately created by the State, targeting only middle class girls performing in dance bars, where they dance alone or in groups with other girls. Their homes and reputations were vandalized while the State went on a spending spree with our tax money to fight a long, stupid legal battle against them. That too, after the Governor had told them not to. And the High Court had turned them down. So they went all the way to the Supreme Court to fight a case that clearly violated the right to livelihood.

What is this sick, moralistic charade all about? Why does the State still want to persist with the ban even after the Supreme Court has turned it down? Who will compensate the 75,000 victims? Who will help them regain their lives?

 

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