India

India’s financial capital Mumbai will soon have its famous dance bars back.

The Supreme Court last month allowed dance bars to reopen, eight years after they were shut down by the state government.

32-year old Rashmi is a single mother who works as a restaurant waitress.

She earns little now, compared to what she earned as bar dancer.

“When I was at the dance bar we had our own house, our children studied at the best of schools and our family lived a comfortable life. We worked hard and earned good money from the profession and we never felt compelled to do anything that we didn’t want to do. But today, we have no house, our children no longer go to schools and the entire family is disintegrated.”

Dance bars have been described as ‘jewel in the crown’ of Mumbai’s night life.

Dancers like Rashmi earn money by entertaining the drinking male customers and dancing to hit Bollywood songs.

Happy customers would then shower them with money.

But eight years ago, the government ordered the bars to close.

The government argued the bars were morally corrupting the society.

R. R Patil is the Maharashtra State’s Home Minister.

“They were openly violating the terms of license. We also considered how badly women were treated in these dance bars. It was highly undignified. And after several discussions, the state assembly passed a unanimous resolution to approve the ban with full consensus.”

Before the ban, more than 70 thousand women were employed in some 1,400 dance bars in the state.

Varsha Kale, head of the Bar Girls’ Association, says the ban had left them miserable.

“Some of them committed suicide, many lost their families. At first we thought that only dancers will suffer, but waiters and singers also lost their job. Now they are all poor.”

Some were even forced to prostitution, says Rashmi.

“Earlier nobody could force a bar dancer for anything. But after the closure of bars, women were forced into prostitution. They were forced to sell themselves and the people who bought them were the same who had clamoured for the ban.”

Bar dancers and owners challanged the ban in court.

In 1996, the Bombay High Court struct down the government ban saying it’s unconstitutional and violating the right to livelihood.

The government accused the bars with obscenity and immoral trafficking,

But bar owner Praveen Agarwal says they couldn’t prove these allegations.

“They couldn’t prove any wrongdoing they had accused the bars of. It was just to show their might that the police used these girls as scapegoat and booked them under case after case.”

And after six years, the Supreme Court has also upheld the High Court’s verdict.

Senior advocate Anand Grover represented the bar dancers in the Supreme Court.

“It actually asserts the women’s right to autonomy that they can decide what they want to do with themselves. The moral brigade who want to control it for the larger “common good” who think they have the prerogative to decide what other people should do, that has been very clearly negated by the Supreme court .”

But the recent verdict has evoked criticism from many, including some women’s groups.

Ranjana Kumari is the Director of New Delhi-based Centre for Social Research.

“The International Labour Organization’s convention, to which India is a signatory, says that every worker has a right to decent work and the work of bar dancers can by no stretch of imagination be called decent, after all why do they dance?  For the pleasure of a bunch of drunken men, for their titillation... If women are allowed to be used for all this then it violates both their right to a dignified life as well as the right to decent work.”

The state’s ruling coalition are also upset with the verdict.

Home Minister Patil says the government will respond and review the ruling.

“They all demand that the dance bars must not be allowed to reopen. They say the government should enact a law if necessary to continue the ban.”

Dance bars can reapply for licenses and reopen.

Bar dancers like Rashmi are celebrating the verdict, hoping to make a new beginning.

“We hope the government will give us back the freedom and life we had 8 years ago.”