Bar Dancers Case: Citizens' Enquiry on Police Atrocities (Parallel enquiry into bar dancers case)
Duration: 00:42:22; Aspect Ratio: 1.333:1; Hue: 339.380; Saturation: 0.058; Lightness: 0.338; Volume: 0.172; Cuts per Minute: 0.566; Words per Minute: 128.920
Summary: After the ban on dancing was implemented in the dance bars, many women workers in the bars working as dancers were rendered unemployed. Some of them later joined back as waiters in the bars. Of course, this new work did not pay as well, customers now had close access to them and therefore could harass them. But they still chose to do this work as this was a familiar work setup for them, they knew the bar owners, and also not many employment opportunities are available to them given their education and migrant status.
The raids on the bars, even after the implementation of the ban on dancing, suggests that even waiter service work for women is not acceptable by the State. Is it felt by the State that if no women work in these bars at all, these would become not as ‘corrupting’ places? Is it the presence of women in the bars that corrupts men, elicits criminal behaviour? Drinking per se is not prohibited in the licensed bars and pubs of the city and they continue their business as usual.
A parallel investigation team comprising of women’s rights and human rights activists and lawyers was put in place to investigate the mass raid that happened on the bars where everyone from women waiters, to other staff including managers and owners along with the customers present were arrested. The investigation team asked the workers about the raid, the police behaviour and the procedures after the raid. Various incidents of police harassment on the women also come up as a major issue in this enquiry.
Retd. Hustice H. Suresh, journalist and women’s rights activist Geeta Sheshu, Journalist Dilip d’Souza, women’s rights activist Sujata Ghotaskar and advocate Flavia Agnes were part of citizens’ panel. The depositions before the Committee were made on 27th August, 2005 at Y.W.C.A., Colaba, Bombay and the final report titled, ‘Abuse of Authority’ was released on 11th October, 2005 at the Press Club in Mumbai.
The struggle for the human rights of the bar dancers, like many other professions which are related to sexuality, is affected by the issue of visibility. Often the dancers hesitate to openly protest or even press a complaint fearing that they would be exposed to their families and neighbours. The police then take full advantage of their vulnerability. Even in this event a few girls requested anonymity. Respecting their reservations we have taken out their images. Yet we have decided to upload their statements not only to reach their voices to a larger audience, but also to highlight the issue of social invisibility. We are also uploading the images of other dancers. Through this period of collective struggle some girls could successfully rise above the social stigma and its oppression. We thought we would honour that too. We hope all visitors and users of this site will understand the delicate balance and act accordingly.
Bombay
Male worker (MW): At around 9, 9:15 two policemen came. We did not know they were policemen because they were not in uniform. We took them to be customers. They covered the door. And then later more policemen came in uniform. They made all the women stand on one side of the bar and told the staff also to stand on another side. Customers were told to be on tables that they occupied.
Since the ban on dancing in dance bars was implemented, police has been keeping strict watch on the bars. The few women workers in these bars, who worked as dancers have now taken up waiter service in the bars. Even after the ban, the police has routinely raided the bars to make sure that the dancing does not happen. In the raid that happened on 24th August on various bars, even though there was no dancing going on the bars, all the women doing waiter service, customers present, all staff, including managers and even owners, wherever they could be found, were arrested by the police.
Within 10 days of the implementation of the ban on bar dancing police atrocity hit the bars again. They may not have been convinced about the former dancers being waitresses in the bars and suspected some foul play. But such suspicion cannot give them the authority to arrest the workers without any investigation and legal procedure. Police could afford to act in such a manner as the bars were already tainted in public mind due to the sustained morality campaign by the Govt. In this edition of democracy human rights are only applicable to the privileged citizens who are not morally tainted!
ban
bar dancers
customers
dance bars
dancing
harassment
police
raid
staff
state
state violence
uniform
vigilance
waiter service
women
workers
KC College
GS: Then?
- Then they took names and addresses of everyone present.
GS: Whose address did they take? Of the girls?
- Of the girls, ours (staff) and the customers.
GS: How many people were there…There were 9 girls and the rest??
- Yes, 9 girls and 19 others.
DS: customers?
GS: Staff?
- 6 and 1 manager.
DS: Then they put in lock up?
GS: What did they say to you? Did they say why had they come?
- They did not say anything to us. They took addresses and our statements. They write in Marathi which we don't understand.
GS: Then?
- Then they took names and addresses of everyone present.
GS: Whose address did they take? Of the girls?
- Of the girls, ours (staff) and the customers.
GS: How many people were there…There were 9 girls and the rest??
- Yes, 9 girls and 19 others.
DS: customers?
GS: Staff?
- 6 and 1 manager.
DS: Then they put in lock up?
GS: What did they say to you? Did they say why had they come?
- They did not say anything to us. They took addresses and our statements. They write in Marathi which we don't understand.
The most common case of human rights abuse is to not let the accused know the charges that they are arrested under. In Bombay the police often do that under the cover of using Marathi in the First Information Report (FIR) and panchnama (document of evidence). The migrant workers can't follow that language and they are also denied the facility of translation. Besides the women working as waiters were arrested without the presence of women constables, which is mandatory under the law. Since most of the bar workers were either illiterate or did not know Marathi, they had no idea what papers they signed on.
The police arrested everyone present in dance bars on the day of the mass raid, post the ban on dancing. Not only did the police arrest women working as waiters without the women constables, which is a necessity under the law, they also took their signatures on documents without explaining those documents to them. As most of the bar dancers as well as the staff, either can not read as they are not educated, or they can not read Marathi, as they are migrants from various parts of the country, they did not know what papers they have signed. No explanation or charges were explained to anyone arrested.
arrest
confession
consent
customers
document
education
explanation
manager
marathi
police
powerless
signature
staff
statement
Ghatkopar, Rajawadi Hospital
JS: They took everyone to the police station? Even the customers?
- Yes, everyone, they did not spare anyone. They kept us in lock-up till 4:30 in the morning. We hadn't even eaten. They didn't even let us drink water. They also did not let us out to go to the toilet. Only later when we requested them, they let us go to the toilet.
JS: What happened after 4:30?
- After that they took us to hospital in Ghatkopar, and got our medical tests.
DS: Medical tests were done for everyone? For what?
GS: For alcohol?
- People who hadn't had alcohol, medical tests were done for them as well. I don't know, to find out if some one was ill or something.
GS: Were there any breathing tests etc?
- No.
GS: Then what were the tests for?
JS: Where did they take you for tests?
- Ghatkopar
JS: Where in Ghatkopar? Rajawadi hospital.
Alcohol consumption is not illegal in India. A bar is licensed to sell alcohol. Conducting alcohol test on people who work in drinking bars and arrested from their legitimate work place is a simple case of harassment. It could be a way of spreading fear among the circle of bar owners and bar dancers. As the Bar owners association and the bar dancers union prepared to go to the court to challenge the constitutional validity of the ban, the police went on a rampage to threaten them. This could also be a clumsy attempt to trace some sex related disease and thus malign the bars.
The raids on the dance bars had everyone present in the bars at that time, arrested. As police routinely does, all of them were taken for medical examination, put in lock up, taken to court, fined, moved to other lock ups, without telling any of them what the charges on them were.
alcohol testing
authority
blood test
breath tests
consent
ghatkopar
harassment
mass arrest
medical examination
police station
power
prison condition
rajawadi hospital
state
Andheri
JS: Rajawadi hospital… at 4.30 am?
- Sir!
DS: then?
- From there they put us in Andheri lock up.
GS: Did they say anything about what is the charge being leveled against you?
- No. when they were taking the statements we told them that there was no dancing happening in the bars and the women were involved only in waiter service. And all women were wearing saris and Punjabi-suits.
In order to gain respectability (read invisibility) the bar dancers had started wearing traditional clothes such as saree or Punjabi suit. They were also forced to shift their vocation from dancing to waiter service. Yet their gender identity keeps chasing them.
The raids on the dance bars had everyone present in the bars at that time, arrested. As police routinely does, all of them were taken for medical examination, put in lock up, taken to court, fined, moved to other lock ups, without telling any of them what the charges on them were.
alcohol industry
andheri
arrest
ban
bar dancers
chargesheet
dance bars
dancing
entertainment industry
hotel industry
modest clothes
moral police
moral policing
police
police stations
statement
vigil
women workers
Andheri
DS: After that they let you go?
- No, they kept me in Andheri lock up for 6 days and then in Arthur road jail for 8 days.
JS: What was the bail amount?
- Rs.15000
JS: Who is the owner of the bar?
- Ratnakar Shetty.
DS: Was he arrested too?
- No. Maybe they could not find him, I don't know.
JS: that's good.
Flavia: Who paid for your bail?
- We paid it ourselves. Some help came from our owners, rest we paid on our own.
Flavia: And for the girls?
- It was similar for the girls too.
Flavia: Are any of the girls from your bar still under arrest?
- No, they are all out now.
DS: So everyone paid themselves for the bail?
- Yes.
After the mass arrests, everyone had to cough up money for their own bail. At a time when dance bar industry is under threat from the state, many workers have been rendered unemployed, paying for the bail had the women and other staff arrested in a tight situation.
Firstly as skilled workers they lost their job of dancing. Then they had to opt for waiter service which was less paying, less glamorous and where they were unskilled. Yet they got arrested for reasons unknown to them and had to arrange for a amount of bail. This is a linear case of stripping a set of people off their access to citizenship.
andheri
arrest
arthur road jail
bail
ban
bar owners
court
dance bars
economic condition
moral police
repression
state
state violence
vigil
GS: Okay, even when all of you were in Andheri lock up, they didn't tell you under which charge they had kept you in?
- No.
JS: No police ever tells the accused of the charges. They are supposed to, but they do nothing.
- One of the constables told us that if we give them 100 rupees each, they won't record our finger prints on the computers.
DS: Do you know the name of this constable?
- No.
JS: Listen, everyone who is arrested, his finger print is taken. This is just to knock out 100 rupees.
Human rights abuse coupled with corruption of the police force. Who would know that better than a retired High Court judge and human rights activist Justice H. Suresh. But a thin pretext of sexual morality could well cover such abuse of state power.
Police harassment especially on people who are rendered powerless by the state itself is brutal. Corruption in the police system leads to added money payment for already vulnerable.
Bombay
accused
andheri
arrest
bail
bribe
chargesheet
corruption
dna tests
finger print
harassment
lock up
moral policing
prisoners' rights
state repression
vulnerable
- The day they raided the bar, they didn't let us eat. But they ordered food and ate.
Sujata: Okay, who was the police inspector?
- Balerao.
Sujata: From which police station?
- Sakinaka. Chandivali.
JS: Okay, the hotels are closed now?
- Yes the hotels are closed. We have no work.
DS: Are you looking for other work?
- Yes, I'll have to. I have to look after my family.
JS: So there were 7 staff workers at the bar. All 7 are without work now?
- Yes.
Flavia: Earlier how many dancers used to work at the bar?
- 20-25.
Flavia: Did raid ever happen before this?
- No. Actually there was one S.S raid.
Flavia: What happened then?
- They let everyone go then.
Flavia: Were there any minor girls?
- No, not earlier. Not even now.
Chandivali
Saki Naka
The result of the raids on the bars was sealing of the bars, rendering the workers (both men and women) unemployed and even further vulnerable. How can crime, if any, be countered by stopping livelihood of ordinary people and making them desperate?
arrest
ban
chandivali
choice
dance bar industry
dance bars
family
hotel industry
migrants
minor
moral police
police
raid
saki naka
staff
trafficking
unemployment
vulnerable
women workers
work
Andheri
Bengal
Flavia: They also talk of pick up joints? Did that happen in your bar?
- No. I am working here for a year, it has not been like a pick up joint.
GS: So your record was clean?
- Yes.
DS: Where were the girls from?
- They are local girls.
DS: Where did they live?
- Asalpa, Ghatkopar, Andheri, Mahakali, Powai.
DS: After the ban on dancing, did the girls go away or they still worked.
- As I said, some 6, 7 girls worked as waiters. Others did not come back. They must have gone back to their villages.
Flavia: The girls were Maharashtrian?
- They were from Maharashtra, Kerala, Bengal.
Ghatkopar
Kerala
Maharashtra
Powai
Most of the bar dancers were migrants to the city of Bombay, who came looking for employment. As their work is now termed illegal, many such women are returning back to their native places.
Maharashtra state, its law enforcement, the growing Right thought and power, all seem to be in conjunction about this. It was corroborated with the recent attack on migrants in the city working and employed in various industries located in Maharashtra. The courts telling the bar dancers to return back to their native lands and MNS activists saying the same to other migrant workers is too much of a coincidence.
The right wing party Shivsena and its newer edition MNS (Maharashtra Navnirman Sena) have periodically launched attack on the migrant workers. Such has been their persistence that even the ordinary Marathi speaking citizens have started believing that the migrant workers are the cause of all miseries and hard ships. Even in the case of the bar dancers one of the popular arguments in favour of the ban was that the dancers were 'outsiders'.
andheri
ban
bengal
dancing
ghatkopar
government
kerala
local
mahakali
maharashtra
migrants
minor
native place
pick up joints
powai
state role
surveillance
trafficking
unemployment
women workers
work
JS: Did the police hit you or the girls or customers?
- No, they did not do any such thing.
Flavia: The girls came asking for work?
- Some did not have money to eat food, some had very young children. Actually, after the ban the girls did not come for some time. The owners said that there is no work for the dancers after the ban and they should not do wrong work, so they started doing waiter service.
Flavia: So, now there are no girls' from your bar who are still under arrest?
- No.
DS: How much salary do you pay the girls for waiter service work?
- Around 800 rupees..
DS: And earlier? For dancing?
- Salary was around the same.
DS: They must have been getting some tips then?
- Yes.
DS: and now?
- … some 50-60 rupees.
Bombay
Some women took to waiter service after the ban on dancing in the dance bars was implemented. Though dancing provides the women workers better money because of tips that customers gave, waiter service seemed like an option when their primary livelihood was snatched by the government.
Harassing, arresting women and other staff , raiding even after the dancing in bars has stopped, puts the workers in a vulnerable situation as all their choices of livelihood has been made illegal.
The campaign against the dance bars was based on the issue of public morality. It rendered a work force of 70,000 women jobless in one stroke. When a few of them tried to work for a much less paying job of waiter service, they were still persecuted by the police. It seems that these women and their colleagues were being systematically illegalized and pushed towards destitution by the state.
abuse
ban
bar dancers
choice
custodial abuse
customer
dancers
livelihood
moral police
police harassment
prisoners rights
salary
tip
unemployment
vulnerable
wages
waiter service
women
work
After the raids and arrests, bars were sealed. The little bit of employment and livelihood opportunity was also snatched away from workers in the dance bar industry.
Flavia: So right now, bars are closed?
- Yes it's closed. It's been sealed. They have done the sealing in all the three bars in Saki Naka. They have put four charges, I think.
Sujata: All cases would be clubbed together? That's what has been told?
- Yes.
JS: There would be one case against your hotel. Each hotel will face one separate case… Okay you can go.
GS: Do you want to say anything more?
- Only that we don't have work anymore.
Laws, amendments, ban, court cases, arguments can go on… but the bottom line is "only that we don't have work anymore".
Bombay
Saki Naka
ban
chargesheet
choice
court
dance bars
government
hotel industry
judiciary
lawyer
migrants
police
raid
saki naka
sealing
unemployment
Bombay
Powai
Saki Naka
bar dancers
dance bar
hotel industry
powai
waiter service
work
GS: Payal and Rekha.
Which bar did you work in?
- Sajani
GS: Where is this?
- Powai, Sakinaka.
JS: Both of you are from the same bar?
- Yes.
JS: How long have you been working?
- Me, for three years.
JS: As dancers?
- Earlier as dancers. Now as waitresses .
DS: Both of you are working for three years?
- No. first she came, then me.
DS: So how long has it been for you?
- Four years.
GS: Four years in the same bar?
- Yes.
DS: So earlier you worked as dancers?
- Yes. Then the bars were closed down. They were closed for a few days. Then when they opened again, they started the waiter service. Now we need food to eat, we can't sit at home. So we went for it. Now, police always harasses us.
Three to four years in the same job – ordinarily that would entitle them for seniority, income raise and other benefits. But in this case they ended up being in an inferior job and less security.
Bombay
ban
bar dancers
bar owners
dance bars
dancing
employment
government
harassment
livelihood
police
salary
tips
waiter service
women workers
work
Bar dancer describes her present work as a waiter in the bar.
Bombay
alcohol
arrest
customer
food
hotel industry
police
raid
serve
waiter service
-That day, at 9:30 the police came in.
DS: This was also on 24th August?
-Yes. Waiter service was on, so we used to go.
GS: So what exactly is your task in the waiter service? Giving snacks etc?
- Yes. When they order, we have to get it. Say if the customers ask for biryani (an Indian rice preparation), we get it for them.
JS: So whatever they order you get it for them? Ok, were there only women waiters or men were waiters too?
- No, there are girls and boys waiters.
JS: How many?
- There were 12 women waiters, and ….
GS: Men waiters?
- We can't remember. When they arrested we were nervous. Probably there were 4 male waiters.
GS: So they arrested everyone? All women and 4 male waiters?
- Yes.
JS: Was your manager also there?
- Yes, manager as well as the owner.
Sujata: What is your manager's name?
- Satish. Owner's name is Ratnakar.
Sujata: Ratnakar Shetty?
- Yes.
DS: Was the food cooked there itself or was it brought from outside?
- No, it was cooked in the bar itself. The customer orders, we tell the cook, it is cooked and we serve it to the customer.
Flavia: You were a dancer earlier?
Yes.
Flavia: How much did you earn as a dancer?
- Not too much. It depended on whether the customer gave money or not.
DS: But approximately?
200 or 300 Rupees…
DS: each night.
Yes…
The dancers were not the only people who got affected first by the ban and then subsequent persecution by the police. A network of people –such as waiters, cooks, taxi drivers, DJs, suppliers, guards etc. were dependant on the bars. As the revenue of the bars fell sharply after the ban, this large work force of both men and women suffered.
Bombay
Presently working as a waiter in a bar, the woman worker speaks about how the raid happened on 24th August.
Some women took to waiter service after the ban on dancing in the dance bars was implemented. Though dancing provides the women workers better money because of tips that customers gave, waiter service seemed like an option when their primary livelihood was snatched by the government.
arrest
ban
bar dancers
bar owner
customer
dance bars
dancer
hotel industry
money
police
raid
salary
staff
tip
waiter service
Bardhaman
Bombay
Calcutta
Flavia: How did you come to the dance bars to work?
- Just like that. By reading in newspapers and seeing television.
JS: Where are you from?
- Calcutta, Burdhman. I am from M.P., Jabalpur.
JS: Here how do you live?
- We live together.
DS: So you said that each night you used to earn Rs. 200-300/-. Did you get any salary from the bars?
- No.
DS: So those were only tips?
- Yes.
DS: Now the bar owner gives 200, 300/- ….
DS: Everyday?
- No not everyday, sometimes. If there are customers he can give us some money, otherwise how would he also give? Now because of waiter service, there might not be as many customers. We don't get tips anymore. If there is no profit, how would the bar owner give us money?
GS: So, you have no salary as of now?
- No. no fixed salary.
GS: So depending on the number of customers, you might earn some?
- Yes.
Jabalpur
For illiterate women dancing in bars was one of the few options of livelihood. That is why many women from all over the country migrated to Bombay very much the same way that any migrant worker comes to a big city for work. Some of the women had a basic training in dancing, some were instinctive, yet many others picked it up on the job. But after a few years on the job they could be called skilled workers. But presently that skill itself is termed illegal by the government.
Some women took to waiter service after the ban on dancing in the dance bars was implemented. Though dancing provides the women workers better money because of tips that customers gave, waiter service seemed like an option when their primary livelihood was snatched by the government.
After the ban on dancing and arresting of customers during raids, customers are wary of going into the dance bars now. As a result the bars are not doing well. Neither do the women now earn regular salaries, they don't get the tips form customers. The bar owners are dealing with their own business loss too.
ban
bar owner
calcutta
customer
dancing
earning
exotic
information
jabalpur
loss
lure
migration
newspaper
salary
television
tip
waiter service
Bombay
In the raid that happened on 24th August on various bars, even though there was no dancing going on the bars, all the women doing waiter service, customers present, all staff, including managers and even owners, wherever they could be found, were arrested by the police.
bar
bar owners
customers
force
harassment
modest dressing
police
raid
signature
uneducated
waiter service
women police
women workers
GS: Was your bar also raided the day many other bars were?
- Yes.
GS: So what happened?
- They took our signatures…
GS: Please tell us from the start.
- Four five police came, one was in civil dress. They said they would only take our signature and let us go.
DS: Were their women police officials?
- No, there were men police officials. So, they took our signatures and addresses forcibly. We were reluctant, but they said that they would let us go after this. After we signed, they told us to get in police vehicles.
GS: What was the time then?
- 9:30 at night. The raid came at 9.30
GS: On 24th?
- Yes.
GS: Ok, you were saying something…?
- Yes. They took our signatures.
GS: On paper? What was written on the paper?
- We don't know that. They took our names and addresses.
DS: Nothing else? Have you read?
- No. I can't read. How will I know.
DS: (to the other girl) Do you know how to read?
- No.
Flavia: What were you wearing that day?
- Suit (an Indian dress). Salwar kameez.
Sujata: So, they took all 12 girls to the station?
- Yes, all of us.
Sujata: Where did they take you?
- To Powai chowky.
Flavia: Were any women police there?
- When they arrested us, there were no woman police present.
GS: They took men to the chowky as well?
- Yes.
GS: How many?
- Four waiters and manager and owner as well.
GS: Customers as well?
- Yes, they took customers as well. The cook and the cigarette seller downstairs were also taken by the police.
DS: How many customers were there?
- Can't say.
JS: Approximately?
- Some 5 customers.
Only that many were there at night.
- Very few come now, usually it's empty.
For a large number of citizens the state is only a body to be feared. They are completely unaware of the role of state which is meant to give protection to its citizens. The situation arises as these people are illiterate or semi-literate, desperate in their poverty, engaged in a profession which is morally tainted though may not be illegal and migrant to the big city. All the above facts actually should make them ward of the state machinery. But instead they have become pray to the police force and the home ministry.
Bombay
In the raid that happened on 24th August on various bars, even though there was no dancing going on the bars, all the women doing waiter service, customers present, all staff, including managers and even owners, wherever they could be found, were arrested by the police.
arrest
ban
bar dancers
business
customers
dance bars
dancing
education
modest dressing
police
powai
profit
raid
reading
state
waiter service
women police officers
After the mass arrests, everyone had to cough up money for their own bail. At a time when dance bar industry is under threat from the state, many workers have been rendered unemployed, paying for the bail had the women and other staff arrested in a tight situation.
Andheri, Bombay
andheri
arrest
bail
ban
court
dance bars
family
lawyer
migrants
migration
moral policing
raid
vigil
women
women workers
DS: Do you have a family?
- Yes, they are in village.
DS: So you live by yourself. Where do you live?
- Andheri….
DS: Where in Andheri?
- …. (illegible)
DS- How long were you under arrest?
- Around fifteen days. My brother-in-law came, gave money and then I came out.
Sujata: How much money?
- …Altogether 2000 less than 20,000 Rs.
Sujata: This was the amount for each person's bail?
- Yes…there they took 15,000/- and then in court lawyer took…
DS: When did he say the hearing is?
- We have been told the dates till now, though we don't know the next date.
I had gone on 23rd to the court. We were suppose to get some money. The judge said we should get our ration cards, identity proof, house, property papers etc. and then we'll get some money back. And if we can't furnish such proof, then we won't get any money and that we should go back to our villages. They said no need to come here, you don't have to give attendance here, don't take this tension, you can just go back to your villages.
GS: So they are telling you to go back?
- Yes, when we got arrested I asked a lawyer. He said that we should go back. Why to run after money, just go back is what he said… why get into all these trouble?
JS: In Andheri court?
- Yes.
JS: Who is the lawyer? Prakash Shetty? He has appeared for all.
- Yes.
Flavia: The bar owners have engaged this lawyer or…?
- No, from my village…
Flavia: You have engaged him?
- Yes.
JS: You don't know his name?
- No.
- How would the owners help us? They themselves have been arrested. The police told them that we are taking the girls, you come with the money, and we'll let the girls go. The owners reached, police arrested them as well.
The system may not protect the former bar dancers, but it definitely taxes them. They had to pay a bail amount without even knowing the allegation against them. For women who do not even know how to say 18,000 (she says 2000 less than 20,000) such amount of bail surety was extracted. The state and the laws and its keepers appear like insurmountable ill fate to them. So much for the modernist democracy of the country!
Bombay
Maharashtra
Most of the bar dancers were migrants to the city of Bombay, who came looking for employment. As their work is now termed illegal, many such women are returning back to their native places.
Maharshtra state, its law enforcement, the growing Right thought and power, all seem to be in conjunction about this. It was corroborated with the recent attack on migrants in the city working and employed in various industries located in Maharashtra. The courts telling the bar dancers to return back to their native lands and MNS activists saying the same to other migrant workers is too much of coincidence.
arrest
bar dancers
bar owners
court
emigration
evacuation
force
identity papers
lawyer
migrants
police
proof
ration cards
responsible
state
unemployment
Bombay
Byculla
DS: When you used to dance did you face any raid at that time:
- No.
GS: What charge they put on you?
- No charges were put.
GS: What did they do? Abused you… or?
- When we were taken to Byculla police station, there were women police present. They abused the girls, even beat up a few of them.
GS: So they hit the girls?
- Yes. Pulled their hair and slapped
DS: Were you hit too?
- Why would they hit me? And if they did, I would hit them back.
Sujata: While you were in police chowky in Powai, were there any problems there? Were they speaking to you badly there?
- No, it was okay there. Here in Byculla, there were problems. If we asked for water, they abused us and called us bad names.
DS: What abuses?
- Whore, bar woman, and such things.
GS: And these were women constable?
- Yes.
GS: And they hit two women?
- Two or thee women.
Flavia: Do you know their names?
- No.
GS: They pulled those women's by the hair…
- Pulled hair, hit them on face and other body parts too.
GS: Only to those three women?
Yes.
Only changing the gender of the police and state officials do not essentially ensure protection to women. Women officials trained within the patriarchal society and state system follow the same norms and beliefs as their male colleagues. Infact often the women police officials appear more brutal against other women in order to prove their mettles to their male colleagues.
Police harassment especially on people who are rendered powerless by the state itself is brutal. The ex- dancer and a waiter at a bar narrates the incidence of police abuse when bars were raided and many arrested.
Powai
abuse
arrest
bar dancers
charge sheet
custodial crime
marginalization
moral police
police harassment
prisoners rights
public morality
women workers
Flavia: You gave money to the lawyer too?
-Yes.
Flavia: How much?
- Rs. 4000/-
DS: What are you doing now?
- Nothing right now. We are sitting at home.
DS: Are you looking for work?
- No. Where to look? If we go to work at some one's house, they'll tell us to go away because we have worked in bars.
JS: Do you have any education? How far have you studied?
- No, we don't.
Bombay
Some women took to waiter service after the ban on dancing in the dance bars was implemented. Though dancing provides the women workers better money because of tips that customers gave, waiter service seemed like an option when their primary livelihood was snatched by the government.
Many bar dancers are not educated, therefore other employment avenues are closed to them. Their status as bar dancers also leads to minimized employment options for them.
bar dancers
court
domestic work
education
employment opportunities
lawyer
money
public morality
women workers
work
Byculla
Powai
Santa cruz
The bar dancer who was arrested in one of the bars during the raid talks of happenings after the arrest.
She also questions the arrests and wonders if it was legal to raid the bars when there was no dancing going on in the bars.
She speaks about the minimized choice of livelihood for them and wonders where she would earn her livelihood from now on.
arrest
ban
bar dancers
choice
dance bars
dancing
employment
livelihood
police
police procedure
pubic morality
state
survival
GS: Were you taken directly to Byculla from Powai chowky?
- No. they took us first to Santa Cruz from Powai. Then they got us to Byculla.
Sujata: How long were you kept at Powai?
- Just the night. Then at Santa Cruz for two, three days. Then in Byculla for five days. From there we were taken to court.
JS: Anything else?
Flavia: What do you do now?
- Nothing. We are sitting at home. But we don't understand why were we arrested in the first place? - When we used to dance, they never arrested us. So why now… while we are doing waiter service, did they arrest us?
- They themselves told us to reopen the bars and then they arrested us.
DS: What do you feel?
The bars should be shut down or reopened?
- They should be reopened. How would we survive? It's difficult.
DS: Some people say it's wrong work.
- Who says?
DS: Some people think that. Would you work again if they reopen?
- Yes I will. Whatever you say, the bars should be reopened. If they don't reopen how will we earn our livelihood?
JS: Ok, you can go.
People do not live by the law; they live by necessity, desire and norms. There is no reason or facility for an ordinary citizen to know the functioning of something as distant and abstract as laws. But when life pushes them on the wrong side of the law they suddenly get an encounter with it. Most of the time they have no idea how and why this legal system works and how to get out of it. Instead of providing assistance, which is the basic characteristics of democracy, the system takes advantage of their ignorance.
An arrested bar dancer, in the parallel enquiry speaks about the minimized choice of livelihood for them and wonders where she would earn her livelihood from now on.
Bombay
ban
bar dancers
bars
choice
dance bars
education
employment
livelihood
migration
state
survival
women workers
JS: You three are together? Ok, tell us your name?
- Nikita
GS: Age?
- 20, from Calcutta worked for three years
JS: You?
- Nisha, 28 Mumbai worked for five years
- Saloni, 26, Moradabad, worked for six years.
A set of three girls come in. Many of these girls do not want their identity as former bar dancers or waitress in bars to be revealed in public. They fear ostracization from family and neighbours due to the moral stigma attached to the job. Family which could not give them education or security, neighbours which did not protect them and the state which has criminalised them; come together to make them further vulnerable with the fear of exposure. However many other bar dancers eventually grew above this fear during the movement against the ban. At the beginning they used appear for public meetings and press conferences under veils. But slowly, as the movement picked up momentum they dropped their veils. (in this context please visit the events "bar dancers speak" in this site)
Calcutta
Moradabad
Mumbai
The bar dancers talk of the police harassment that they face from police. Being stopped by police outside the bars, unwanted sexual comments, bribes are the ways in which police harasses them. This harassment of bar dancers is known to happen even when the dancing was happening. Even now when the dancing has been banned, women workers at the bars do not earn as much as they used to, police still harasses them as they are the soft targets of such harassment.
arrest
ban
bar dancers
confidentiality
dance bars
ethics
late night shifts
media
migrants
police
police harassment
public moral
publicity
raid
safety women workers
self censorship
sexual harassment at workplace
waiter service
women workers
work
workers
workplace
photo reference
JS: Where are you'll from?
Girl1: Please don't photograph us.
JS: Ok, no photo.
Girls: No photo, no names also.
JS: Names are confidential.
Girl 1: It gets very difficult for us.
JS: We'll keep the names confidential. Okay, don't take photos of these three girls here.
Where are you'll from? Different places?
- Calcutta
Any you?
- I'm from here, Bombay.
And you?
- Moradabad
JS:You all work together?
- Yes.
JS: Where?
- Ellora bar, Borivali east.
DS: How long have you been working?
- Three years.
- Five years
- Six years
GS: Six years? In the same bar?
- No' in this profession.
JS: Were all of you arrested together? Separately? Ok you talk one by one… first Nikita. They were arrested on three different days.
Flavia: Was your bar raided?
- We have not been arrested. There was no raid in the bar where we work after the ban. But police catches us when we return home after duty hours. We used to dance earlier, now we are in waiter service. When we go home at 12 in the night, the police harasses us.
The Bar Girl and the City
"[the beer bar] for me it is the intersection of everything that makes the city fascinating: money, sex, love, death, and show business." Suketu Mehta, Maximum City
Nikita's account of traveling by the last local, remind us that there is something peculiar to Bombay: its public transport system, the ladies compartment, the freedom, mobility and anonymity the city 'allows' its women, ), that forms a condition of possibility for the emergence of the Bombay Bar dancer.
Her genealogy can be traced to the emergence of Bombay as a colonial seaport and centre of commerce and it's attendant peripheries of pleasure. Traces of this history abound in contemporary Bombay For example the colonial administration licensed 'play houses' – centres of bawdy drama and local vaudeville, folk theatre, dance and music performances and silent movie theatres all grew around the 'play houses'. Faras Road in the red light district still has 'pilay house' (in hindi "yellow house"), which have been converted into living quarters for bar dancers and women who work in the local brothels .
As Bombay became a prominent seaport in the late 19th century, its licensed brothels served sailors and received brothel workers from distant parts of the world; it joined a sex trade circuit spanning cities in Asia, South America and Africa an organized system for directing sailors from ports to licensed brothels was approvingly described by the chief medical officer of as early as 1885. Kamathipura Bombay's biggest red light district is named after the community of construction labourers, the kamatis of Andhra Pradesh whose worker colonies were in the area that the red light district grew around.
[ For a history of bombay's red light districts in late coloniality see Ashwini tambe,hierarchies of subalternity:, managed stratification in bombay brothels, 1914-1930, ]
In the nationalistic, morally cleansed aftermath of Independence Bombay was under prohibition. However in the 1970s new licensing laws allowing "Permit Rooms" Bars with permits for liquor to be served were enacted. Though liquor sale laws were gradually relaxed, this history of the state's surveillance and "allowance", and the concomitant nexus between politicians, police and bribery continues to haunt the bars. It was also in the 1970s that Permit rooms began to obtain "Entertainment licenses" to have live music and then dances to pre recorded Hindi film music, and the bar girl came into being. From the central and business districts the bars expanded along with the city and crawled along the suburban railway track routes, following the trail of commuters into and out of Bombay. The class composition of dance bar audiences has changed as dance bars have proliferated– they range from the solidly working class to the decidedly posh, though a majority of the bars still catered to working class and middle class men. [ See Flavia Agnes, Hypocritical Morality, ]
The bar dancers talk of the police harassment that they face from police. Being stopped by police outside the bars, unwanted sexual comments, bribes are the ways in which police harasses them. This harassment of bar dancers is known to happen even when the dancing was happening. Even now when the dancing has been banned, women workers at the bars do not earn as much as they used to, police still harasses them as they are the soft targets of such harassment.
abuse
ban
bombay trains
bribe
dance bars
dancing
harassment
harassment at workplace
moral corruption
moral police
police
power
public morality
safety
state morality
state power
state violence
women workers
DS: Even after the ban?
- Yes.
GS: What do they do?
- While going home… at the stations, when we go to board the last train, they ask us where we are coming from. We usually retort and say can't you make out that we work in the bars and are going back home after duty hours. They tell us to go with them to the police chowky. We say that we have done no wrong, why should we go?
GS: On the train? Or at the station?
- Either at the stations or on the roads… anywhere
(Veena intervenes: It is the Railway police.)
- They take us to the chowkies (police stations) and tell us that they would leave us only if we give them some money. We tell them that we don't know where to get money from. We say that you used to ask for money earlier and even now you are asking when we have no money. Can't you get peace without harassing us… we tell them such things. If we don't give money, they don't let us go. Now, I won't keep sitting in the police station all night. So we take money from friends, give it to police and then go home.
GS/DS: How many times has it happened?
- Since the ban, it has happened twice or thrice.
DS: In 1.5 months, it has happened twice, thrice?
- Yes. They keep harassing us….
JS: They take you to the police station, take money from you and only then let you go? … It is another way of making money by extortion.
- Yes, once we give money, they let us go. They claim to know how much money would be found in bar dancer's house if her house is raided. We can also tell how much money can be found in police officials' house if it is raided.
This is a case of criminalizing a work force and make them vulnerable to all sorts of atrocities. The state has illegalized their former vocation of dancing and they have opted for a lowly paid and accepted vocation of waitering. But the low level police constables still could victimise them due to their past record and harass the in public places. There is no other authority where these girls can complaint to. Seems they have lost complete agency to citizenship.
Bombay
The bar dancers talk of the police harassment that they face from police. Being stopped by police outside the bars, unwanted sexual comments, bribes are the ways in which police harasses them. This harassment of bar dancers is known to happen even when the dancing was happening. Even now when the dancing has been banned, women workers at the bars do not earn as much as they used to, police still harasses them as they are the soft targets of such harassment.
bar dancers
bribe
corruption
custodial crimes
entertainment industry
harassment at workplace
money
police harassment
police station
public morality
safety
soft target
state
state power
vulnerable
women workers
All about the Sex and All About the Money
"The street worker defies the patriarchal order of the economy (demanding money for that which the man is entitled to for free), space (freely roaming the labyrinth public street) and the social (bringing the market into the bedroom, and the bedroom into the market) and hence a cause for extreme anxiety and violent repression."
If we can see the sex worker and the sexual performer as a part of the same continuum, the bar girl case, is emblematic of just some of these anxieties about dirty sex and dirty money. The State in its Written Submissions before the High court, sought to defend the ban on bar dancing, arguing :
"legal culture and the public morals of a nation may merge, economic justice and taboo of traumatic trade may meet and jurisprudence may frown upon any dark and deadly dealings.".
A survey by the SNDT University found 42.80% women earn less than rs. 10,000/- a month and within that several earn between rs. 4,000 and 6,000/- only. Almost 70% women earn less than rs. 15,000/- a month
Urban myths and legends of the bargirls' fabulous and illegal wealth , sometimes in conjunction with other signifiers of her "excess" – (including her associations with the "Bombay underworld" , and her "Muslim-ness") abounded in the media blitz surrounding the issue. During one public meeting a (pro ban) feminist activist characterised the bar girls as good time girls who ate "biryani" had cell phones and travelled in cars. Tabloid news stories include an account of how Abdul Karim Telgi (he, of the Stamp Paper scam) showered a girl with Rs 7 Lakhs in a single night . Nikita is probably referring to the arrest of dancer "crorepati" Tarannum in a seven bedroom Juhu bungalow for alleged links with cricket betting .
Borivali
Dance bars have been under state scrutiny for some time now. Before implementing the ban, they have arrested, intimidated, raided bars and the workers. Surprisingly, even after the ban has been implemented and state succeeded in its agenda, the harassment, arrests, raid on the dance bars have continued.
Kandivali
Mumbai
agenda
arrest
arrests
ban
bar dancers
borivali
citizens
government
kandivali
police harassment
public morality
raid
state
suppression
women workers
DS: Which police station?
- I live in Kandivali. They had taken me to Borivali police station.
GS: You are saying that they harass women. How many times have they caught you like this?
- It has been thrice for me. Once before the ban, and twice after.
- Before the ban when they took me to the police station, they kept me there for a whole night and day, and let me go only after extracting Rs. 5000/- from me. They had taken us, staff and all customers too. This was before the ban.
GS: You said they also caught you after the ban. Do you remember when that was?
- Yes, it happened some 20 days back. At that time I was alone, I didn't even have money on me. Very few customers come after ban on dancing, so of course, we don't earn money, and therefore I was not carrying any money.
- Customers come to see our dance, not for anything wrong. The allegation on us that we do something bad is wrong and baseless. After hard day of work, they just come to sit and enjoy. If they felt like they used to give us money. We used to earn the money through our hard work. But no one likes that.
Now we do waiter service. We have to run our families. I myself am not married, but my parents are old now. My father does not work, I have to take care of my two younger siblings.
Since the dancing has been banned, we are in a very tight situation.
Either for dancing in bars or for doing waiter services, the girls are being victimized for their gall to be economically independent despite their low social status, gender identity and illiteracy. It is a class and gender issue and actually do not have much to do with legal issues.
Bombay
Dance bars have been under state scrutiny for some time now. Before implementing the ban, they have arrested, intimidated, raided bars and the workers. Surprisingly, even after the ban has been implemented and state succeeded in its agenda, the harassment, arrests, raid on the dance bars have continued.
agenda
arrest
arrests
ban
bar dancers
citizens
customers
entertainment industry
government
harassment
hard work
hotel industry
police
police harassment
public morality
raid
state
women workers
work
Bombay
The ban on dancing and now scrutiny of women workers in the bars have not only made the women as workers vulnerable but their livelihood is under threat too. Also these women have relatively low employment opportunities elsewhere due to their educational and migrant status.
ban
bar dancers
choice
dancing
family
hotel industry
livelihood
responsibility
vulnerable
waiter service
women workers
work
Woman worker in a dance bar narrates one of the many incidents of their harassment at the hands of police.
Bombay
arrest
ban
bribe
corruption
dance bars
harassment
law enforcement
money
police
public morality
state apparatus
state power
vulnerable
women workers
JS: So that day when they caught you, how much money did you have to pay?
- I was carrying only Rs. 200/- I spend Rs 50/- on my traveling. So I gave them Rs. 150/- and told them they can either take that or make me sit at the police station forever. That's what I told them, so they took the money and told me to go.
GS: So would you know who this police official was? Was he from railway police?
- No, I don't know. He was just a ….constable on the road.
JS: Have any of you also been harassed by the police?
- Yes, they harass me when I go back home late at night.
DS: Where do you live?
Malad.
DS: And you?
- Kandivali.
DS: So do they trouble you on trains or on station?
- Station.
GS: What happened with you?
- When we travel at night, they stop our rickshaws and ask us where are we going, why are we still going after the ban etc. they talk to us abusively.
GS: What kind of abuses?
- That we are whores, that we like going to the bars. They tell us that we should come with them, that if we like going with the customers why not the police.
Immorality is an abstract and social construction. Illegality has carefully worded definition. The police force is meant to preserve the law and order only. But the abusive police consider it their rights to take advantage of the abstract notion of social immorality and harass the former bar dancers. They would not dare to do it to other women and men engaged in jobs in industries and corporate sectors. It is the association to service industry and the state sponsored campaigns against dance bar that make these women pray to the lust of the police constables.
Another woman worker speaks about the harassment they have to face by police after they travel back to their homes after late night work. How women in entertainment industry are viewed, by pubic, by state apparatuses is very clear through how these women are treated. By snatching away their livelihood and minimizing their options of work, the state has rendered them vulnerable.
Kandivali
Malad
abuse
entertainment industry
harassment
night work
police
safety
sex work
sexual harassment at workplace
soliciting
state power
vulnerable
women workers
Another woman worker speaks about the harassment they have to face by police after they travel back to their homes after late night work. How women in entertainment industry are viewed, by pubic, by state apparatuses is very clear through how these women are treated. By snatching away their livelihood and minimizing their options of work, the state has rendered them further vulnerable.
Borivali
Kandivali
ban
bar dancers
bribe
corruption
dance bars
earning
late night work
manikchand
money
police harassment
state power
vulnerable
women workers
work
GS: When was the last time this happened?
- It keeps happening after every two-three days. They do patrolling on bikes. So if they spot us, they stop us and ask for all kinds of license, papers. Then they ask us where we are coming from etc.
They ask us why we are going back so late. There is permission for waiter service to continue till 12 at night. Some or other police people are always around. Sometimes when we don't have money they tell us fine, if you don't have money, get us some Goa ( a brand of chewing tobacco), the Manikchand gutkha! That's how they are.
- I live in Kandivali and work in Borivali. Since the dancing in bars has closed down, there are so many problems. I have a kid who studies in school, I have to pay rent.
Sujata: Since the bars shut down, have there been incidents of police harassing you. Can you talk more about that?
- They really harass me. I am anyways not used to traveling by buses or trains because earlier I used to travel by rickshaws. Still I am managing somehow by asking others and traveling by trains now. On the way police stops me and questions me. Then I myself get scared. There is nothing more to say.
Too many things work against these women: their work space (bars and pubs) and their former vocation (dancing in bars) are tainted; they are migrants to the city and unfamiliar to the ways of the metropolis; they do not have families or other support system in the city; they are illiterate and of course they are poor and desperate to earn some money. All these facts make them vulnerable citizens. Yet they are treated as criminals for the same reasons.
Bombay
Another woman worker speaks about the harassment they have to face by police after they travel back to their homes after late night work. How women in entertainment industry are viewed, by pubic, by state apparatuses is very clear through how these women are treated. By snatching away their livelihood and minimizing their options of work, the state has rendered them further vulnerable.
bar dancers
bombay local trains
dance bars
entertainment industry
harassment
late night work
police
state power
women workers
DA: How much do you earn?
- Now?
- Sometimes 100, 150, sometimes 50 and sometimes nothing. This is how it is.
GS: Do you have a regular rickshaw driver or not?
- When we used to dance, there was. But not any more. Now we don't have the capacity to travel in rickshaws.
GS: Do you want to say anything more?
- Dancing should resume, otherwise we'll all be destroyed. It's not only about us, but there are so many women…we might not be married, don't have children… but many of the women are married and have children.
- Our bar owners are good, they are thinking about us and helping us. They give us food, sometimes money. This is quite a lot for us at this moment.
Only, save us from the policemen. They don't let us live. They had a problem when the dancing was happening, they still have a problem even after the ban.
Bombay
By snatching away their livelihood and minimizing their options of work, the state has rendered the women working in the bars vulnerable.
A worker at a bar speaks about the effects of ban on dancing on them and how it makes them further marginalized and a soft target for police and other harassment outside their workplace.
The women were vulnerable to the police even when dancing in bars was legal. But at that time they earned well and could buy their freedom. But now with sharp decline in income they found it impossible to cope with the lust of the policemen.
In normal circumstances the interest of the bar owners and the bar dancers would be opposite of each other and the dancers' rights would be fought against the bar owners. In fact prior to the state surveillance and public campaign against dance bars, the bar dancers had started to get unionized and formulate job benefits, retirement policy etc.
But when the govt. attempted to shut down the entire industry the employees and the employers were forced to share the same platforms to fight for survival. Their mutual survival depended on each other.
ban
bar dancer
bar owners
customers
dancing
earning
family
government
livelihood
marriage
minimized choice
money
options
police harassment
power
public morality
responsibility
salary
state
tip
unemployment
waiter service
work
Calcutta
Powai
- I am Pinky Dey.
GS: What's your age Pinky?
- 37.
DS: This interview is not for media, just for the enquiry.
GS: What is your name?
- Mona.
GS: Your age?
- 23.
JS: Where are you from?
- Sea Land.
JS: What? Where are you from?
- Oh, from Calcutta. I thought you were asking the hotel's name.
GS: What is the name of the hotel?
- Sealand
DS:Where is this?
- Powai.
DS: How long have you been working here?
- In this hotel for a year. I was in another hotel earlier for around a year. It has been 2.5 years for me in the line.
Some ex- bar dancers and now waiters in the bars talk about their work and how long they have been in the line.
There are some women who were working in the bars for a year or two and there are also women who have been in the bars since the bar dancing started in Maharashtra and Bombay.
Two other, slightly older women come in. These women are not much bothered about public exposure. It seems the younger girls are more scared of public exposure. Maybe because they hope to get back to the normative life of middle class marriage and fear that their association with dance bars could affect such possibility. While the older women, already with the responsibility of children – with or without marriage – couldn't care less.
bar dancers
calcutta
enquiry
hotel industry
interview
media
migrant
parallel investigation
women worker
Bombay
Some ex- bar dancers and now waiters in the bars talk about their work and how long they have been in the line.
There are some women who were working in the bars for a year or two and there are also women who have been in the bars since the bar dancing started in Maharashtra and Bombay.
They also speak about the raid that happened as part of mass raid and arrests on many dance bars in Bombay on 24th August.
arrest
ban
confession
dance bars
dancing
employment
hotel industry
lock up
medical examination
migrant
police
raid
state power
vulnerable
waiter service
women workers
GS: And you?
- I have been with Sea Land since it started …it is one and half year now.
JS: Were you arrested? Police caught you?
- Yes
JS: Both of you were arrested together?
- Yes.
JS: When was this?
- It was 24th Wednesday.
GS: Was it a police raid?
- They came at around 9:30. They said they need to take down everyone's names. We thought they've come for a general enquiry.
- They asked us our names, asked where we live, took our addresses. They said they would take us to the chowky and let us go from there. They took us there, took our names, addresses again and then took us to the doctor for medical examination. We were scared because nothing like this had happened with us before.
GS: So they came at 9:30.They were in uniforms or in plain clothes?
- No they were in uniforms. They came and told all of us to go with them.
GS: How many people were there in the bar at that time?
- Not many customers. Only two or three tables were occupied. It was too early for customer to come in.
GS: And how many girls were there?
- 11.
JS: You were all doing waiter service?
- Yes.
JS: What dress were you wearing?
- We wear suits ( an Indian wear) for waiter service.
GS: So what is the work in waiter service?
- The customer comes and sits, orders for a beer, so we have to get it and pour it for them. Now, what to do. We have to do some work. We have children and old parents at home, we have to look after them.
The Politics of Clothing and the Construction of Tradition.
Respectability is a highly calibrated affair, and the 'suit' signals the both the bargirls' essential Indian ness, and distance from the dirty business of sex.
Ratna Kapur argues that "the suturing of culture and sexuality in the fantasy of the nation continue to set the discursive stage on which the emerging debates on sex and sexuality are erupting in India" [. Ratna Kapur Postcolonial Erotic Disruptions: Legal Narratives of Culture, Sex, and Nation in India10 Colum. J. Gender & L. 333.]
In the Court, this meant that the bar dancer had to repeatedly aver that She was 'Indian' and 'Traditional' (not Western' or 'Bangladeshi' or 'Nepali' or 'Filmy').And further, the peculiar public configuration of the debate, within a wider constellation of Maharastrian pride' that she was not just Indian but Maharashtrian. Everything about her, particularly her clothing, and her performance was constructed to reflect this. Even her relationship to the movies was denied.
See Description.
I give only one illustration from the pleadings made on her behalf by the Bar Owners' association: : "The dresses worn by dancers in these bars are usually traditional Indian Dresses like sarees, ghagra cholis or salwar kameez unlike the dresses worn by dancers in movies. Similarly the movements and gestures are far more decent and orthodox than those in movies. The dances performed in dance bars are neither obscene, vulgar nor indecent dance performances for the entertainment of men, is part of the cultural tradition of Maharashtra e.g. Lavnis, Tamashas"
The same story of police invasion; arrest of waiters, waitresses, cooks, cleaners, customers; forced medical check up and illegal detention without explaining the charges. Obviously it was a mandate from the higher authority and designed in detail. Was the police ordered to look for evidences to produce in the court – where the petitions against the ban on dancing in bars were being heard – in order to discredit the bar establishments?
Bombay
The women workers at the bars speak about the raid that happened as part of mass raid and arrests on many dance bars in Bombay on 24th August. They also explain the nature of work as waiter service that they have taken up, now that the dancing in the bars have been made illegal by the state.
alcohol
arrest
ban
choice of work
customers
dance bars
dancing
family
food
hotel industry
livelihood
police
raids
responsibility
uniform
vulnerable
waiter service
Bombay
Powai
The women workers at the bars speak about the raid that happened as part of mass raid and arrests on many dance bars in Bombay on 24th August. They also explain the nature of work as waiter service that they have taken up, now that the dancing in the bars have been made illegal by the state.
alcohol
bar dancers
bar owners
food
hotel industry
mass arrest
police
police station
salary
staff
susceptible
vulnerable
women workers
DS: How many of you worked in the hotel?
- 6, 7 staff and 10, 11 girls.
JS: All of you were arrested?
- Yes, all of us. Even people who cook and clean in the kitchen, who don't even get salary, they work only for food, they were also arrested. They have made our lives terrible since two- three years.
GS :Where did they take you?
- To the chowky.
GS: Which chowky?
- Powai.
GS: Were there people from other bars too?
- Yes. There were people from Sajani, Sangram Hotel.
DS: Do you know them?
- Not really. But we knew they were from bars.
GS: How long were you in the chowky?
- For 3 to 4 hours. Then we were taken for medical check up.
GS: Where?
- Somewhere in Santacruz.
After medical examination they kept us in lock up. They said we would be taken to court, we would have to pay fine, and then we would be let out.
When they took us to court, the judge spoke many things in English, which we don't understand. So we asked our bar owner. He told us that we would not be let off until we pay money. Now, how would we give money? We haven't been earning since the business in our hotels is down. We don't have money to eat food, how would we pay these fines. Bar owner helps but how would he also get so much money for all of us?
The system taking full advantage of the girls' vulnerability and lack of knowledge about rights and procedures. The police station uses Marathi which the migrant girls cannot follow. Then the court uses English which too the uneducated girls cannot comprehend. As a result their helplessness increases and they fall pray to more people such as lawyers or court officials. And finally get entangled in a mesh of illegality.
Santacruz, Bombay
After the mass arrests, everyone had to cough up money for their own bail. At a time when dance bar industry is under threat from the state, many workers have been rendered unemployed, paying for the bail had the women and other staff arrested in a tight situation
arrest
bail
ban
bar owner
court
dance bars
english
fine
medical examination
money
penalty
raids
salary
unemployed
vulnerable
After the mass arrests, everyone had to cough up money for their own bail. At a time when dance bar industry is under threat from the state, many workers have been rendered unemployed, paying for the bail had the women and other staff arrested in a tight situation.
Bombay
abuse
arrest
bail
bar owners
charge sheet
dance bars
hotel industry
judiciary
lock up
migrants
money
native place
penalty
police
raid
salary
state
unemployed
women workers
GS:How much did they ask for?
- They asked… around 16,000/-
GS:How much did you finally give?
- We had to give 15000 to them and 1000 for the lawyer.
- Just like this we had to pay so much. Total we had to shell out around 20,000/-
JS: When did they finally let you go?
- On1st.
JS:1st September?
- Yes
JS:So you were in lock up for a week?
- Yes
GS: They didn't tell you what charges they have put on you?
- No. They kept abusing our bar owners.
JS: You said they arrest the owner too?
- He was in his village. But our manager was arrested.
GS: What are their names?
Manager's name is Ajit Anna. Owners name is…Chandra Anna
DS: Where do you live?
- Sakinaka.
DS: How do you go home after work?
- By auto.
GS: Were there women there?
- Yes, they had arrested women from many bars.
GS: No, I mean, were there women police officers?
- No there was no woman constable, gents police arrested us.
GS: They kept you in Byculla or took you somewhere else?
- They took us to Andheri court and then back to the lock up. Then after the hearing on 29th, we were taken to Byculla.
One police station to the other, complicated court procedures, lots of papers, institutional formalities, formidable set up – these by themselves are enough to scare the lives out of these illiterate village girls.
After the mass arrests, everyone had to cough up money for their own bail. At a time when dance bar industry is under threat from the state, many workers have been rendered unemployed, paying for the bail had the women and other staff arrested in a tight situation.
Bombay
abuse
arrests
bar owners
dance bars
livelihood
migrant
morality
police
public
raids
state
women workers
Andheri
Bombay
Byculla
Sakinaka
Police arrested women working as waiters without the women constables, which is a necessity under the law.
Some women took to waiter service after the ban on dancing in the dance bars was implemented. Though dancing provides the women workers better money because of tips that customers gave, waiter service seemed like an option when their primary livelihood was snatched by the government. Now that this work for women is also under threat from the State, these workers seem to have no options for their livelihood.
The state is supposed to generate employment for public, not minimize already existing opportunities of livelihood.
andheri
arrest
auto rickshaw
bar dancer
byculla
education level
employment opportunities
hotel industry
livelihood
lock up
options of work
prison
saki naka
women police officers
women workers
work choice of work
Bombay
Though some women workers have got some help from bar owners, State has put them in a very vulnerable position by snatching away their livelihoods. Due to their education status, migrant status and the added status as a bar dancer, newer employment opportunities for these women does not seem very easily available.
bar dancers
choice
dance bars
education
employment
livelihood
migrant
public morality
support
women workers
work
DS: Now what are you doing?
- We are in a bad situation. Owners give some money, so we are making it work somehow. Here the owner gives us food. We have children in the village.
Where would we get work? We want our hotels to restart, we want to work there. That is our livelihood. We don't know any other work. If we go to find work in people's houses, they want proof that we are not thieves. We want our hotels to restart. We don't like other jobs.
DS: Will you dance again if it reopens?
- We used to dance earlier. If they let us dance, we will dance. If not, we'll do waiter service. There should be something.
JS: There should be some job…
- Yes, there should be some job. Or tell the government that they should give us some work.
JS: See the situation is such that they cannot get any other job, not even people's houses. How far Have you studied? Have you gone to school?
- No.
JS: They have not gone to school, so they can't get any job except domestic work. In domestic work they must be saying… no these are bar girls. It is risky to keep them.
GS: Do you want to say anything more?
- We just want to say that hotels should restart. Tell the government that we don't want anything else, we just want our hotels to start working again. That would be good for all. What else to say? We don't want anything more.
There are not much option for the former bar dancers. The waiter services are anyway few and besides in the absence of its main attraction dancing, the bars are doing very badly. So one option is to become domestic worker for a much less pay – but the middle class employers would harbor the same prejudices against former bar dancers and are unlikely to employ them. Next option is to go back to the native places from where they escaped to the big city driven by hunger. If it was a viable option the women might not have migrated to Bombay to start with. The next option is to become sex workers. There have been instances of the settled sex workers violently resenting the entry of large number of former bar dancers into the already crowded fragile profession. So the last and most concrete option is destitution. An instance where around 70,000 working women become destitute overnight due to state intervention might be one of the rarest cases in history.
Bombay
Dancing in the bars was banned by the government. As this is what most of the bar dancers want to do, they feel at loss after the ban. Hotel industry, and more specifically dance bar industry is where these women have been working and earning their livelihood from.
Many of them are not educated to seek employment elsewhere.
artist
bar dancers
choice
dance
dance bar
education
employment opportunities
entertainment industry
government
hotel industry
livelihood
moral police
performance
police
public morality
state
strengthen
vulnerable
women workers
work
Pad.ma requires JavaScript.