No longer bar for adult mumbaikars

No longer bar for adult mumbaikars

Dance bars are legit entertainment.

Moral grounds, as a wise man once had rightly said, are always the last refuge of people who have no sense of beauty. And beauty being in the eye of the beholder, the Supreme Court’s lifting of the veritable ‘ban’ on Mumbai’s dance bars on Thursday could well be argued as a victory of aesthetics. But the court’s verdict to do away with the prohibitive — and hare-brained — restrictions was based on the sturdier ground that “a practice which may not be immoral by societal standards cannot be thrust upon the society as immoral by the State with its own notion of morality”.

In other words, morality, like aesthetics, must be measured by the time and mores of people, not imposed from above as some kind of Mosaic commandment set in stone. This, notwithstanding state home minister Ranjeet Patil stating that the verdict does not ‘reflect the sentiments of the people’. And NCP and Congress in the opposition going even one better by accusing the ruling BJP of ‘colluding with dance bar-owners’ to have the ban lifted.

The Maharashtra government would have done any 17th-century Puritan or 21st-century Wahhabi proud by its multiple attempts since 2005 to shut down what it deemed to be venues of obscenity. This incarnation of the Vice Squad was, however, denied the lip-smacking pleasure that the self-righteous always seek several times by courts that found the government’s multiple Ordinances to ban dance bars unconstitutional. But since 2015, the authorities found roundabout ways to snuff out this form of entertainment for adult Mumbaikars — by prohibiting the sale of liquor in these bars, and insisting on CCTV cameras inside the premises, among other prohibitive rules. The Supreme Court has rightly chucked out these conditions, barring one of bar timings. That thousands of outof-job — or, worse, those who had gone underground and under the radar of existing laws — professional dancers will get back to work is heartening. But let’s not also underplay the fact that tens of thousands of law-abiding consumers of this adult entertainment special to Mumbai will no longer be treated as children.