The ordeal of this group of women (bargirls in India)has not over yet even after the revocation of ban by High Court order as they still have to survive without any income source for another two months.

These two months period though seem short but it has come after eight long months after they lost their livelihood. Further, as the battle goes to Supreme Court, there is possibility that this period may indefinitely increase if the higher court grants stay to immediate implementation of order. The government is also playing delaying tactics in the license renewal process. In such event many of those who have so far survived may succumb to pressures of situation.

What strategies you would suggest to them?

I don't know how to react because 20 per cent of my bar girls have turned to prostitution. We hope that revocation of the ban will bring them back. There are about 75,000 bar dancers in Mumbai, apart from a floating population of another 25,000. Though the ban is now void, the harm done to the lives of these girls, who had to turn to prostitution, is irrepairable
— Varsha Kale, President, Bharatiya Bar Girls Union

READ REACTIONS OF ALL HERE

The judgement of Mumbai High Court declared the state governments recent act to ban dance in the bars as discriminatory, unconstitutional. Recognising dancing in the bars as legitimate profession for women to earn their livelihood, it rejected the argument of the government that dance performed in these bars was obscene or vulgar.

The judgement is of 257 pages.
More details and recent developments later.

You can now access and read the whole judgement of Mumbai High Court that lifted the ban on dancing in the bars.

Those who are not afraid of reading lengthy legal documents can click the following link.

The Judgement

WE WON!
BARGIRLS WON!
COURT HAS LIFTED THE BAN AND TERMED THE BAN ACT AS "UNCONSTITUTIONAL and UNFAIR"

!

Details later!
Thanks all!!

:p

WE WON!
BARGIRLS WON!
COURT LIFT THE BAN AND TERMED BAN ACT UNCONSTITUTIONAL and UNFAIR

Details later!
Thanks all!!:p:p

As you all are aware that along with Womanist Party of India, I am also honorary president of the Bhartiya Bargirls Union. This is first all women union with membership of more then twelve thousand. It is union of women dancers, waiters, and singers working in the liquor bars in India.

On 15th August last year despite nationwide protest by this union in which around 100000 bargirls participated, the state government of Maharashtra (India) banned dance in the bars. This made around 75000 dancers to loose their livelihood directly. All these girls had little education and most of them came into this profession as last survival effort. Union therefore demanded for their rehabilitation. But government refused and ban was enforced without any rehabilitation and compensation.

This led some bargirls to commit suicide. Those who were earlier in prostitution and were able to earn through dancing went back to it. Tragically many girls who were never into commercial sex work were forced to get into it to survive.

On behalf of bargirls I went at last to court against the decision and tomorrow the Mumbai high court is going to pronounce judgement. It is matter of life and death / prostitution for thousands of bargirls and their girl children.

Whatever may be court verdict your support can enable me to convince at least some of them that even people around the world are behind you and not to loose hope.

Please post your best wishes and supportive messages which I can show to them. It can strengthen their resolve, boost their morale.

(And to tell you truth it will help me also as I am under enormous pressure)

Its prayer time for 75000 bargirls in India.
Tomorrow is D-day for them.
They are praying alone.
They are praying together.
Why?
Want to know?

"Women leaders demonstrate strength, humility, good decision-making and balance. Essentially, they lead by example"

"Women of the world unite; you have nothing to lose but your bitter halves. This may appear an exaggeration, but it is not out of place."

"Women leaders also score over their men counterparts at EQ, multi-tasking and task prioritisation."

The above are excerpts from a cover story in leading Indian weekly.

What do you think

Do you agree?

Full story

On this day (April 9) in 1939, Marian Anderson (1897-1993) had planned to give a concert in the Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C. The Hall was owned by the Daughters of the American Revolution. They refused to let her perform because she was black.

Eleanor Roosevelt wife of President FDR,, was outraged at the prejudice shown by the DAR and resigned her membership in the organization in protest. Later on she helped to arrange for Anderson to give a concert outdoors at the Lincoln Memorial on Easter Sunday. Anderson performed in front of the statue of Abraham Lincoln for an audience of 75,000 people.
She began the concert by singing "America." This was one of the most famous concerts given in the history of United States and for that matter world. This event helped open the doors of opportunity for other African Americans in many ways.

From this time on, Anderson refused to sing at any place that was segregated. Anderson was a leader and an inspiration and will remain so...

These are the photos of one of the unique campaign of women initiated by me against alcoholism in one tiny village in India. It was different from usual anti-liquor campaigns.
We (11 women along with me) hold fasting in the memories of those whoever had died due to excess alcoholism in the office of village council itself in the village for three days. There was one liquor shop in the village owned by Sarpanch (elected village head) himself. All women supported and join the sit in turn by turn as the news spread. It all happened bit spontaneously.

I am (in the red dress) being offered juice to end the fast as per our tradition.

No one can imagine today that the person who fought for the livelihood right of the 75000 bar girls who dance in the bars after the government banned dance in the bars, had led such campaign 13 years ago. Another interesting thing was this village is in proximity of the village of Home Minister of the state who imposed this ban.

Don’t you think men are more insecure and need reassurance all the time? They are insecure about paternity, sexual prowess, physique; their many different abilities. We can list many of those.

If every woman start writing about the expressed insecurities of her partner during their private moments the world will shook apart. Great heroes, towering figures will touch the dust. Even the most confident man needs a little affirmation all the time and if he doesn’t get it he start feeling insecure and start looking for reassurance here and there. Their insecurity can come and be seen in many different forms, from being insecure about physical appearance to feeling unconfident thousands of different things. Is this insecurity in men genetically dictated?
Why really men are so insecure?
Above all what is the impact of this insecurity among the male species of human beings on family, relationships, history, polity, international affairs, governance…?

They are working on glass. They earn less then (Rs. 40 to be exact)one dollar after working whole day in this hazardous conditions.

The rise in the number of divorce cases across the globe has become a cause of concern among young couples.
The thought of marriage makes them more anxious than ever. So much so that when they finally do tie the knot, they enter the relationship unsure if it's going to work.

But many marriages do survive. How do they do it? Will this institution has any future?

"A donkey is like a housewife ... In fact, the donkey is a shade better, for while the housewife may sometimes complain and walk off to her parents' home, you'll never catch the donkey being disloyal to his master"
This is an excerpt from one textbook in India.
A textbook used at schools in Rajasthan (India) compares housewives to donkeys, and suggests the animals make better companions as they complain less and are more loyal to their "masters," reports one newspaper.
The book was approved by the state's Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party government but has sparked protests from the party's women's wing.

What do you think?

You can read the whole story here.

Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated on April 4, 1968, in Memphis, Tenn., USA.

“I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

I have a dream today.”
Martin Luther King

I salute your dream in your memory. Let‘s all have a dream.

Police constable Sunil More, who raped a teenaged collegian in broad daylight inside a police outpost at Marine Drive in Mumbai last year, was today sentenced to 12 years' rigorous imprisonment by a local court.

The Judge in his judgement said the police constable, who is to maintain law and order and protect the lives of others, had committed a crime which resulted in public outcry and left a mental scar on the victim.

The public prosecutor argued that this is not an ordinary case and public confidence has been shaken at large and stringent punishment is necessary to satisfy the victim and society AND pleaded before the court to give maximum punishment to the accused, considering the gravity of the crime so that no one should dare to commit such a crime.

(This rape took place when the Home Ministry of Maharashtra (under which the police department comes) was busy in gaining accolades for raising higher moral standards in society by banning dance in the bars.)

Never before have so many women held so much power.

The growing participation and representation of woman in politics is one of the most remarkable developments of the late twentieth century.

For the first time, women in all countries and social classes are becoming politically active, achieving dramatic gains in the number and kind of offices they hold.

Why is political power, off limits for so long, suddenly becoming accessible to women? And what are the implications of this trend for domestic and foreign policy?

The phenomena of ‘dance bars’ and ‘bargirls’ in India are unique in many ways and that creates real problem for anyone to understand the issues involved.

First of all the ‘dance bar’ of Mumbai and Maharashtra are entirely different from all types of bars throughout the world in the way they function. They have no parallel and hence people who try to relate it with bars in other areas having component of dancing or entertaining women tend to develop wrong notions. People coming from the West particularly cannot conceive the idea of money showering without the glimpse of any nudity or without any direct sexual service. Naturally they tend to buy the argument of the state and certain NGOs that these bars are breeding ground for prostitution and crime.
‘Daulatzada’ or showering money on entertainers without any specific sexual favours is tradition solely rooted in Indo Arab composite culture and hence unimaginable as well as unacceptable to modern West and pro-western Indian elite. ‘Dance bars’ in Mumbai unknowingly revived this tradition and presented it in different form. This struck cord with the subconscious world of different people within India. The communities traditionally engaged in public entertainment especially in the medieval period and have stooped to engage their women folk in sex work due to loss of patronage in the modern period saw this as an opportunity to regain their status as entertaining artists. The girls from these communities flocked to Mumbai to avoid getting forced into prostitution. Even the men from these communities preferred this new opening just not because it involved better money.

On the other hand the bars presented a ‘medieval court’ like setting to neo rich class of traders, contractors and government officials who were ‘different’ from English educated professional elite. They had money, access to illicit sex but were deprived of the company of well dressed, educated looking women. All these three had commercial relations among them and found the bars as a place of concluding their deals in the setting that provide them their long desired entertainment.

On 29 March last year, the Home Minister of Maharashtra, apparently unaware of what was forthcoming, casually announced the ‘ban on dance bars’ in Mumbai and within a fortnight it became the hotly debated national issue.

Every one had expected resistance from the bar owners to the move but no one anticipated the issues that this move could touch and pop up. Instead of ‘banning’ it proved opening of Pandora’s Box. Thousands of bar girls came on the street to protest demanding ‘rehabilitation’. The issue of ‘rehabilitation’ became the agenda of debate and support to it began to come from quite unexpected quarters. Though at last, despite month long sit in movement, petitions and interventions of National Women Commission, Human Rights Commission, 50000 strong rally of bargirls, the Government successfully carried out its plan after six months of resistance to ban ‘dance’ in the bars. However the intervening period stunned everyone. It was because the world of so called ‘dance bars’ and the ‘bar girls’ was quite unknown not only to the outsiders but even to every individual group within it had understanding about only part of the problem. Everything was guessed on perceptions which in turn were based on hearsay, stereotypes and imagination due to sheer ignorance about this phenomenon. No one, the policy makers, the state, people, civil society, media, law enforcement agencies had understanding of the uniqueness and complexities of the issue before this announcement. Naturally, many people were taken aback by the support as well as opposition it received, media coverage it got and issues it raised in subsequent days.
Even now after several months of debate, discussion and collective scrutiny very few people can gauge the real impact of the ban on the dance in bars is going to have. Still the public opinion, social groups and even human rights groups are undecided about the issue. Many people for the better or worse think that the issue is over and out permanently after effective enforcement of ban on the Independence Day. Few will realise that far from over, it is a mere beginning and the ‘ban act’ has only uncovered the problem which has history and future. Why it is happening? Why people are unable to understand the gamut of the problem?

The main reason behind this is that the whole issue of ‘dance bar’, ‘bar girls’ which was trivialised and oversimplified by the state, politicians, local media along with certain NGOs is too unique and complex to understand without perspective and serious non positional study.

Any researcher doing study after thousand years would likely to conclude that Indian women in 21st century showed inclination towads indecent and obscene behaviour then their men counterpart.

Look at the pictures below. These are the dresses and performances that attract cops to arrest these girls for obscene behaviour in public places. They are being compared with striptease of West.

There are two acts against obscenity and indecent behaviour namely Section 110 and 294 in India. They are only applied to the women working in bars as waitesses or singers or dancers by the cops indiscriminately. No one is so far has been convicted as there is no clear cut definition of obscenity or indecent behaviour and generally cops decide whether the behaviour of the woman is obscene or not. Many lower rank cops are so familiar with applying these law to the women that when once I asked one of them how many men you have booked under this law he started laughing about my ignorance. He told me that these laws are meant for women and not men. How man can be obscene? Only women can provoke through her dress, looks or gestures, he enlightened me. Though he agreed that men can behave indecently but then they can be booked under other acts but not this one, he clarified.

This made me search whether this act has been applied to men as well or not. So far I have found no man charged under this law.

I really fear some day some one will analyse these police records and conclude that contemporary Indian women were indecent and their behaviour was obscene while men were decent and never did obscene acts.

Now that India is fast assuming status of developed nation, Indian women need to bacome decent quickly.

By the way can we define obscenity and indecency?