The art of moral policing female bar dancers

Last year, the Supreme Court directed the Maharashtra state government to grant licenses to dance bars and allow them to operate. Following the statement, around 140 bars in Mumbai and about 1,200 across Maharashtra have applied for licenses, but the state government continues to remain opposed to the idea. In their latest submission to the SC, the state government justified the restrictions by calling the dance of bar girls ‘artless’ and likely to be ‘obscene’, given the girls are not ‘trained’ artistes.

Immoral establishments that corrupt

In 2005, the late Home Minister RR Patil banned dance bars across Maharashtra, calling them ‘immoral’ establishments that ‘corrupt’ the youth. He said the performances of dances being permitted were ‘indecent’, ‘obscene’ or ‘vulgar’, and were leading to the ‘exploitation of women’. Not only were such performances ‘derogatory’ to the ‘dignity of women’, they also ‘injured’ the ‘public morality’, said Patil.

“If you see dance bars as establishments that offer adult entertainment, then perhaps you should make peace with the fact that the performances could be erotic in nature. Wahan koi kathakali karega kya? (Will people perform Kathakali there?),” asks Varsha Kale, President of the Bar Girl’s Association, who has been fighting for out-of-work bar girls, enabling them to sustain themselves since the ban on dance bars in 2005.

Kale says only people over the age of 21 are to be allowed into dance bars and there are existing provisions against obscenity in the Mumbai Police Act as well as the Indian Penal Code. These can be used to press charges, she says, in case of a performance that actually offends a visitor. “Besides, let us look at traditional dances like Lavni and Tamasha that are a part of Sringaar Ras and are erotic in nature. Does anyone call them ‘artless’?” she questions.

It’s a clean business

Adarsh Shetty, President of the Association of Hotels and Restaurant (AHAR), has been quite vocal about his point-of-view from inside a dance bar. He has cleared the air about how one cannot even touch the dancer in the bar. “The moment a dance girl enters the premises of the hotel, she is the responsibility of the hotel,” he said to the media in an earlier interview. “Her security is of prime concern, and we make sure she is not ill-treated in any way.”

Traditional roots

Many of the girls who earned a living from dancing in the bars were from tribes and communities like Nat, Bediya, Kanjar and Deredaar. These are communities that are traditionally associated with performing arts, circus and dancing. “There were girls attending college during the day and working as dancers at night. One had even taken an education loan for her brother,” Shetty said.

An alternate living

The 2005 ban, says Kale, pushed a lot of the girls into the claws of traffickers. “With no income, it was they who could get them work,”says Kale. Unused to the sex trade, the girls had no idea how to protect themselves and were often victims of fatal sexual violence, and suicide in several cases.

“The Hindi term naachne wali which means professional dancer is used as a euphemism for prostitutes these days and that is ridiculous,” says actor and dancer Rakhi Sawant who is shooting for her upcoming movie based on the lives of bar dancers. “This prejudice is because of our patriarchal society and the backward mentality of people who associate a woman’s body and dancing with vulgarity,” concludes Sawant.