The Immorality of Morality

The ban on Mumbai’s dance bars has created ills, not cured them

By Sonia Faleiro

When RR Patil instigated the ban on Mumbai’s dance bars, he cited the demise of dignity as his motivation. “Dance bars,” Patil claimed, before the ordinance was passed on August 15, “are likely to deprave, corrupt or injure the public morality.” Lest people call him short-sighted, politically motivated in his determination to win over the middle class, or, God forbid, whimsical, the Deputy CM held protracted press conferences detailing the bars’ “ill-effects,” which included their usage as “meeting points by criminals and pick-up joints for girls.” He also expressed due concern on the effect of this safe, legal, well paying employment on the thousands of women who had left situations of abuse and exploitation behind to come to Mumbai, and work in the bars.

Less than a month later, the very girls whose morals so greatly concerned Patil, are newly unemployed, and as the majority continue to be illiterate and have no professional skills, they’re also unable to acquire alternative means of sustenance.

Despite his initial promise of rehabilitation, Patil retracted, leaving an immigrant population of an estimated 75,000 to choose between returning to their villages and starting from scratch, or turning to prostitution. As a result, Mumbai has another social problem to contend with, that of the dance bargirl-turned-escort and prostitute.

Even as Patil enjoys the weight of his cheaply varnished, hard fought for halo, there’s little doubt that his actions will catch up with him. Not only has he wrenched a large group of women from a safe, controlled environment into an unlawful one where abusers run rampant, he has also forced them from a once legal profession, to the world’s oldest, illegal profession. If the dance bars did ever function as pick up joints, Patil’s demolition of their physical space certainly hasn’t ended the proclivity to purchase the company of women, but merely given the men involved greater power to abuse the dancers, who no longer enjoy the stringent security under which most bars functioned.

For Patil, a political move to enhance his party’s vote bank and ingratiate himself with his superiors has cost a state the dignity of many thousands of its women. Perhaps some justifications would have been possible was he able to demonstrate a steady incline in youth morality and women’s dignity, and a decline in police corruption,

and prostitution, after the ban.

Sadly, for all his postulations on the decline of Mumbai’s morals, all his actions have achieved are widespread abuse, poverty and forced immorality.