The dancing girls of Mumbai bars have won yet again, thrice over, with the Supreme Court striking down the ban on bar dancing as “unconstitutional” and protecting the right of the women to earn their livelihood through dancing in bars.
While the media is abuzz with the news and the bar owners are rejoicing, there is a note of pessimism among those of us who had supported their right, as the dancers have long since faded out of the city into a life of poverty and squalor and many have turned to prostitution as their only means of survival.
Challenging the ban imposed unanimously by the Maharashtra legislature in 2005, which condemned them to a life of destitution, they had won in 2006 when the ban was stuck down by the Bombay High Court. The State had been using delaying tactics to ward off a decision as long as it could, thriving on the “stay” obtained at the initial stage, after filing the appeal in 2006. The matter reached its conclusion only when the apex court put its foot down and did not permit further adjournments.
The judgment delivered by a Bench headed by the then Chief Justice of India, Justice Altamas Kabir, in 2013, seven years after the Bombay High Court ruling, commented sympathetically on the plight of the dancers and said that the measure sought by the State government to deprive 75,000 dancers, many of whom lacked basic literacy, on the premise that they were exploited in these bars, appeared to be a cure that was worse than the malady. In a bid to circumvent this judgment, the State government brought in another amendment to the law and established “equality” by removing the exemption granted to high-end hotels and gymkhanas and made the ban applicable to all places of public entertainment.
Now, the State has lost yet again.
(Flavia Agnes is a women’s rights lawyer and had represented the bar dancers before the Bombay High Court in 2006)
