Despite the Supreme Court’s interim order staying last year’s amendment to the Maharashtra Police Act which reinforced the ban on dance bars, it still remains to be seen whether dance bars can reopen. The Supreme Court (SC) bench has reportedly granted the state government with the power to issue licences so that it can regulate “indecent” dance performances. It is unlikely then that the bar dancers — if only because their unconventional and popular style of dancing is often described as indecent — is unlikely to pass the scrutiny of the licensing authority. The back and forth between the judiciary and the state government has continued since the Act, first introduced in 2005, prevented dance performances in hotels, restaurants and bars. In 2013 too, the SC had ruled against the government stating that Section 33A and 33B of the Maharashtra Police Act (MPA) violated constitutional provisions that guaranteed equality of opportunity and the freedom to practice any profession, or to carry on any occupation, trade or business, without discrimination. Section 33B of the MPA did not apply to clubs or gymkhanas where entry was restricted to members, or to hotels, graded three-star and above, in the interest of tourism and cultural activities. The dancers and dance bar owners succeeded in proving that Section 33B was discriminatory and that it affected their right to livelihood. The SC also noted that nearly 75,000 dancers were displaced by the ban and many of them were forced into prostitution.

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However, the Maharashtra government, then under Congress-NCP rule, was in no mood to abide by the spirit of tolerance and inclusion, principles on which the SC had based its judgment. The government then, as well as the present dispensation led by the BJP-Shiv Sena combine, have preferred to analyse the issue primarily through the prism of morality. The claims that dance bars feed into prostitution and trafficking networks have been contested by the dancers themselves, who argued that dancing offered them more respectability, wages and independence when compared to the sex trade. In June 2014, the MPA was amended with superficial changes to Section 33A and entirely deleting Section 33B in the earlier Act which favoured luxury hotels and elite clubs. Going by his initial statements, Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis has reiterated his commitment to the law framed by the erstwhile government. With the final order expected in November, Thursday’s stay order is an indication that the mood in the top court is against the amendment.

Interestingly, Thursday’s order also offers hints that the bench now hearing the matter may not adopt the same liberal stances of the earlier bench that avoided the moral question but slammed the state for not finding indecency when dancers performed in luxury establishments. “Sexual arousal and lust in men and women and degree thereof, cannot be said to be monopolised by the upper or the lower classes. Nor can it be presumed that sexual arousal would generate different character of behaviour, depending on the social strata of the audience,” said the 2013 judgment. The banning of dance bars did not mean that the problem as it was perceived went away. The ban made dancers more vulnerable than ever, to the manipulations of a vicious triad of bar owners, customers and police. This was evident in the regular raids that were conducted on illegal dance bars thriving in Mumbai. It is important to note that dance bars are not the only establishments that objectify women. Their proliferation and popularity is a testimony to the unequal gender relationships in society. How did Mumbai come to have dance bars and not other Indian cities? Perhaps, a market for such enterprises exists in every Indian city but authorities have simply not allowed them to function openly.