Dance Bar Ban: What Should Odisha Govt Learn From Maharashtra Experience?

Bhubaneswar: Can the total ban on dance bar announced by Odisha Excise Minister Prithiviraj Harichandan termed as a knee-jerk decision to propel the government’s Odia Asmita agenda?

How far will this ban be effective? Will these bars make a quiet comeback, flouting norms, or camouflage themselves as the orchestra bars of Maharashtra? Amid such questions doing the rounds, here’s how a similar ban in Maharashtra had turned out to be a failed experiment.

When was the ban ordered?

Dance bars were banned in Maharashtra on August 15, 2005. Section 33A was added to the Maharashtra Police (Amendment) Act, 2005 to impose the restriction. According to this law, all kinds of performances in eating houses, permit rooms and beer bars are prohibited.

The ban on grounds of “immorality and obscenity” was also touted as one of the key achievements of the Congress-NCP alliance.

While the objective was to secure public order, morality, dignity of women, and reduce exploitation of women, including trafficking of minor girls, nearly 70,000 bar girls lost their jobs, slipped into prostitution and penury due to the clampdown.

Mumbai had around 700 bars and 307 among them were legal. In other parts of the state like Thane, Raigad and Pune, some 650 more bars had flourished when the Act came into force. Several bar girls also moved to Dubai and other Middle Eastern countries, and to cities like Delhi, Chennai and Hyderabad where bars operated illegally, a Hindustan Times report claimed.

What did Bombay HC say? 

The ban was challenged in the Bombay High Court in 2006 on grounds that it was in violation of Articles 14 and 19(1)(g) of the Constitution, which guarantee the right to equality and the right to practice any profession respectively. The bench of Justices F I Rebello and justice Roshan Dalvi struck it down, stating that it imposed “an unreasonable restriction” which was “not in the public interest”.

It also questioned the state government’s motive behind imposing the “unreasonable” ban on dance bars.

“The right to dance has been recognised by the apex court as part of the fundamental right of speech and expression. If that be so, it will be open to a citizen to commercially benefit from the exercise of the fundamental right. This could be by a bar owner having dance performance or by bar dancers themselves using their creative talent to carry on an occupation or profession. In other words, using their skills to make a living.”

“It is true that there is material on record to show that many of those who perform dance in these bars are young girls, a large section being less than 21 years of age and with only a primary education. Can that by itself be a ground to hold that they constitute a threat to public order? Can a girl who may be semi-literate or even illiterate who may be beautiful, knows to dance or tries to dance prohibited from earning a better livelihood or should such a girl, because of poverty and want of literacy, be condemned to a life of only doing menial jobs?”

Regarding the exemption given to star hotels, gymkhanas and clubs, among others, the court said: “…the financial capacity of an individual to pay or his social status is repugnant to what the founding fathers believed when they enacted Article 14 and enshrined the immortal words, that the State shall not discriminate.”

SC upholds the HC verdict

Upholding the Bombay High Court’s verdict in the same year, the Supreme Court ruled that the ban was unconstitutional and decided to hear the matter later.

In 2015, the top court put the controversial law on hold and directed the administration to issue licences to dance bars while noting that the state government had re-enacted the legislation, circumventing its 2013 decision that upheld that “dancing is a fundamental right”.

However, it came with a rider. “….no performance of dance will be remotely expressive of any kind of obscenity… the licensing authority can regulate such dance performances so that individual dignity of the woman performer is not harmed.”

The big relief

In 2019, the SC diluted may provision of Maharashtra Prohibition of Obscene Dance in Hotels, Restaurants and Bar Rooms and Protection of Dignity of Women (working therein) Act, 2016, that effectively prevented the reopening of dance bars shut since 2005.

Amid these court verdicts, dance bars made a comeback, albeit in a new form – orchestra bars, providing live entertainment — legally or on the sly. By 2019, there were around close to 250 licensed orchestra bars—less glamorous hubs of entertainment but not completely dissimilar to the erstwhile dance bars where skimpily clad young women danced in front of their patrons, who showered money on them.

These bars were legally permitted to play live orchestra and also allowed to serve liquor within the premises. A bevy of non-singers were paraded and made to croon and sway to music played by a live band. Bouncers hover at the sides of the stage, often trying to strike a deal or collecting money from patrons with the excuse of it being the crooner’s birthday, according to a TOI report.

The orchestra bars warmed up after 11.30pm and dancers aged between 20 and 30, sporting shiny lehenga cholis and sarees, later emerged, the Hindustan Times had reported.

Reports further stated that alert men were often stationed outside these bars to keep a watch on patrolling cops. As soon as they would spot the cops, they would inform the bar people. The dancers would then stop their performances and quietly sit on the sofas, kept next to the stage. Money strewn on the floor would be hurriedly stacked in bags. The bar would then look like what was supposed to be – an orchestra bar.