Will dance bars come alive again with sweat, smoke and perfume?

When dusk falls on the curve of blue bay of south Mumbai, a string of lights called Queen’s Necklace, shimmers and garlands the famous Marine Drive thronging with couples in ecstasy. Elsewhere in the city, the night and alleys swarming with men, become red and yellow with shapes of women’s contours on the doors of night bars; and inside the door blasting with sweat, smoke and perfume wafting out in one wave, cold fluorescent light dancing to the raucous music makes dark shadows look grotesque and decayed. These bars emptied only when the first gleam of morning ray flecked the skies.

Those were the days in the ’80s running right through ‘90s and the first half of the millennium decade. Suddenly in 2005 the state decided to clamp down on these bars where young girls and women swayed and sashayed on gleaming translucent floors with currency notes both fake and authentic slowly swirling down in the haze of cigarette smoke.

On Tuesday, the Supreme Court, slamming the state government’s double standards, lifted the ban, sparking off once again a debate on these dancing joints, with arguments ranging from economic exploitation to right to livelihood to commodification of women’s bodies for male gaze to moralistic sermons condemning it as ‘evil and wicked.’

The debate as made out is not simple and nor is it a one-dimensional problem; the knotty issue is multi-layered trapped in myths, biases and prejudices.

Dancing joints are not new to Mumbai (nee Bombay) city, right from its inception as a major port during British era, the town had marked spaces that came alive only at night.

In the infamous Foras Road-city’s oldest flesh pot, the blind grindings, gropings behind shutters, windows and screens in hovels and tin-patched houses are all part of daily nightly transactions. On this road, also is the dancers colony known as ‘Bachubhai ki Wadi’ where tradition of courtesan continues; as soon as dusk falls, the houses and cabins start jingling with tabla, harmonium and songs, and dancers in spectral light sinuously sway in the rhythm of a snake standing on its tail on swirling waters.

However, unlike dancers of Bachubhai ki Wadi, the new dancing joints in the liquor bars did not have patrons from the upper-class, instead it was the middle-class and neo-middle class of nineties that frequented to see dancers twirling to recorded popular Hindi film music.

Genesis of new joints

Prior to gaining legitimacy and popularity, most of these dancing joints like ‘Night Queen’ operated clandestinely in full knowledge of public as to its location. However, frequent raids by the police deterred people, except ardent patrons. In late seventies discotheques (discs) sprung up in the city and started waning in mid-eighties; it was at this juncture, that beer bar owners began converting these discotheque into dancing joints where girls brought from various parts of country would dance to the recorded music.

The dancing joints played within the confines of the laid down laws that specified: “no dancer would pick up money or step down from the floor during a performance.” The mushrooming of these bars in every alley spun out myths like the dancers earned lakhs of rupees or that underworld contract killers frequented them and et.al.

Barring a few instances of gun-battles which took place in late eighties and early nineties, the goons acted more as staff bouncers, and the money that was reportedly splashed on the floor were mostly counterfeit currency notes; it was done so as to make every customer also throw some genuine currency notes. The profits for the owner lay in exorbitant prices of cold drinks, alcohol and food served in the hotel.

The high-margins of profits sparked off a race amongst hoteliers to convert even a normal food joint into a dancing joint; a mere semi-classical performing licence was needed.

Cashing in on the surging of such joints a Hindi feature film ‘Chandni Bar’ claiming to project the lives of dancers ended up with a far-from truth stereotype moralising, stigmatising the dancers as being nothing but molls of gangsters.The media presented a hyped-up distorted image of dancers and that these dancing joints as the source of all corruption and evil.

It is this fictitious impression amongst the masses that gave state politicians a handle to enforce a ban on such bars on August 16, 2005. The ban was successfully challenged in Bombay high court by a number of women rights and human rights groups like Forum Against Oppression of Women (FAOW) arguing that the constitutional rights of a substantial section of women were being trampled and infringed upon; the state of Maharashtra then filed a special leave petition in the Supreme Court of India.

Just before the ban, FAOW, with the Research Centre for Women’s Studies (RCWS), SNDT University, Mumbai conducted a study and then again after the ban. The studies dispelled all myths woven around these ‘bar dancers,; it found that majority of these dancers were school-drop outs and belonged to lower-class and lower-caste communities with a tradition of dancing in functions.

Most dancers had several mouths to feed in the family, and dancing in these bars not only gave them self-respect but provided some kind of socio-economic security. Contrary to the belief that bar dancers were earning in crores, most of them had income that rarely went beyond Rs 30,000.

The study also found that major chunk of the bar dancers never opted for sex work; in fact the incident of violence against them increased and so also the number of sex workers in the flesh-market after the ban.

The study commenting on the fascist solutions adopted by the state and the witch-hunt of the women, concluded: “Even within this intolerance, there is a distinct class and caste hierarchy. What is alright for upper class, upper caste aspiring beauty queens and film stars is not acceptable for lower class, lower caste women who are bar dancers. In fact, aspiring beauty queens and film stars are glorified as brand ambassadors for different products, even for the product called “India”. Their worthiness soars higher as their rates increase....”