Dance bars open once again: Will Mumbai nightlife do a jig?
Women clad in jazzy television-inspired lehengas, singers belting out the latest Bollywood numbers and patrons guzzling drinks — this scene that sounds straight out of Madhur Bhandarkar’s Chandni Bar — all set to stage a comeback in Mumbai. The city’s famed dance bars will finally throw open their doors after an 11-year-hiatus and a long drawn-out battle.
On Monday, the Mumbai Police issued licences to four dance bars to open, following the Supreme Court’s orders. More permits, which are pending approval, will be issued in the weeks to come. The four bars are sprucing up their spaces and installing cameras and fences, in keeping with the new guidelines. But when the bars finally open, will it really impact society? Will it "corrupt" people, lead to criminal activities or at the other end of the spectrum, will it actually lift Mumbai’s sagging nightlife?
The impact is yet to be seen but if Monday’s developments brought cheer to the bar owners, the dancers and former regulars, it is a setback to the government that was keen on opposing the lifting of the ban. Maharashtra’s famous dance bar shut down will probably go down in history as among the rare occasions when parties spoke in a unanimous voice. Even as Indiana in Tardeo, Natraj in Vidyavihar, Uma Palace at Mulund and Bhandup’s Padma Palace are giving final touches to their spaces, the owners will have to, albeit reluctantly, put into place the 24 guidelines issued to them. Every bar will now have constant surveillance through CCTV cameras. The feed will be directly sent to the police control room to ensure there are no criminal activities taking place.
Another often-seen feature is set to disappear; showering currency notes on the dancers — a scene often depicted in raunchy film songs — is a no-no. In a bid to avoid harassment of the dancers, a three-feet-high fence will surround the stage where the women perform. Visitors will not be allowed to cross that fence and enter the performance area. The court has also ruled that only four women are allowed to perform on stage at a given point of time. To avoid misbehaviour, there needs to be a five-feet-long gap between the dancers and the audience.
The clothes, too, “must not be obscene”. For years, the much publicised and debated move had become a tug-of-war between the bar owners and the government. Over time, it almost turned into a legal versus legislative sore point ever since the high court struck down the 2005 ban. Unwilling to relent, the Maharashtra government had reintroduced the law in 2014 to bypass an SC judgment which had struck down a similar law a year ago. In 2013, the SC upheld the right of women bar dancers to follow their profession.
The state government’s appeal to ban dance bars had been struck down. Citing issues of “morality”, political parties in Maharashtra have been supporting the ban. The state had even passed the order by amending Section 33A of the Bombay Police Act, 1951, whereby dance was permitted in top-class hotels and prohibited in other. While chief minister Devendra Fadnavis spoke about “not permitting obscenity, state minister of finance Sudhir Mungantiwar, while agreeing that dance bars can bring more money to the exchequer, said that it cannot be done at the expense of “affecting the family life of people”.
In 2005, a year after the Congress-NCP government came to power in Maharashtra for its second consecutive term, the then deputy chief minister and home minister RR Patil ordered that dance bars be shut down, describing them as “criminal dens”. The controversial crackdown is believed to have affected the livelihood of an estimated 75,000 women who earned their living by dancing.
A few thousands, who worked as musicians and servers, too lost their jobs. Arguments opposing the ban often cite examples of how some of the dancers were drawn into the flesh trade to earn a living. Others were rendered jobless. The Dance Bar Association, in its appeal, states that the dance bar industry can generate an estimated Rs 1,200 crore every month, which will add revenue to the state exchequer besides generating employment for thousands.
Dance bars, widely romanticised and demonised by filmmakers and writers, are set to dot Mumbai’s streets soon. From being the alleged meeting dens of the mafia in the 1980s and 1990s to spots where numerous stories blossomed, the dance bars have been a subject of much interest. With the dust settling on the controversial decade-long ban, the reopening of dance bars will start a new saga — additional surveillance for the police, new opportunities for the dancers and the bar owners and a reason for the state’s political parties to unite.