BAR DANCERS AND DIFFERING PERCEPTIONS

An important feature of a rally organized by bar owners against police raids in Mumbai on 20 August 2004 was the emergence of the bar dancer. A large number of girls with their faces covered were at the forefront of the rally holding up placards with blown up pictures of semiclad Bollywood stars. It was a statement questioning the hypocritical moralilty of the state and civil society. […] The media reported that there were around 75,000 bar dancers in the city of Mumbai and its suburbs and they had organized themselves into a union to resist police raids.

The mushrooming of an entire industry called the ‘dance bars’ had escaped the notice of the women's movement in the city. Everyone in Mumbai was aware that there were some exclusive ‘ladies bars’. But usually women, especially those unaccompanied by men, were stopped at the entrance. So many of us did not have any inside information regarding the bar dancers. But the 20th August rally changed all that.

Soon after the rally, Ms Varsha Kale, the President of the Bar Girls Union approached us (the legal centre of Majlis) to represent them through an ‘Intervener Application’ in the Writ Petition filed by the bar owners. During the discussion with the bar dancers, it emerged that while for the bar owners it was a question of business losses, for the bar girls it was an issue of human dignity and right to livelihood.