Bengali Nights
Kolkata’s dance bars thrive in a twilight world of obscure laws and political connections
In the short six kilometre drive on the VIP Road from Baguiati to Kolkata’s airport, a visitor so inclined could have his pick of 70(ish) dance bars. In each of these little havens, from the muggy pressures of the day, can be found alcohol, greasy food, and girls fully, albeit provocatively, clothed, wiggling hip and limb in the hope of earning an appreciative note or two from clients. The men, meanwhile, grub together what notes they can for a flash of uncovered thigh, for the glimpse of a navel, or even cleavage into which the notes can be placed. For those who can afford it, the dancing is a precursor to a fleeting encounter in a purposebuilt cubbyhole or even an hour in a grim room.
Women dance on poles. Waiters circumnavigate the room with change for tips. Numbers and addresses are exchanged on paper napkins. And the cars and SUVs converge at all hours. Dozens of bars have sprouted in the southern and northern fringes of the city. Even the centre, a stone’s throw from the city police headquarters, is not immune. Outside bars in central Dharmatala pimps close in on pedestrians. “Laagbe naki? laagbe naki?” they hiss, “Noorjehan, Anarkali, patakaguddi.” Show interest and you are pulled aside and shown an album of girls in glitzy costumes. Hesitate or linger a moment and you’re pushed into a bar, the music—“oh baby meri chittiyaan kalaiyaan ve”—and the AC turned on full blast. Night Queen’s, a bar in Esplanade, even has reviews on the website Zomato, all of them disapproving of the “shadiness”.
That these bars are sleazy is not in doubt. But are they illegal? The Maharashtra government has tried to ban dance bars, and failed. In April this year, the Supreme Court once again reminded the Maharashtra government of its responsibilities. “As the state,” said Justice Dipak Misra in April, “your job is to protect the dignity of these women in their workplace. Your attitude should not go into the extremes of prohibition when you are only supposed to regulate .... In case the performances slip into obscenity, it naturally stops having legal permissibility and the Indian Penal Code will take care of the rest.” In Kolkata, few are arguing that these dance bars are flouting the law, even if the law is nebulous. According to Section 239 of the West Bengal Excise Act, no licensed retail vendor is allowed to hold any professional entertainment or dance or live music, vocal or instrumental, without the special sanction of the District Magistrate or, in Kolkata, the Excise Collector and Police Commissioner.
So-called ‘crooning’ licences are granted at the discretion of the police department. “The licence issued by civic bodies has no provision called ‘dancing licence’,” points out SDPO, Baruipur, Arka Banerjee, who has raided several of these bars. In May, last year, he led a team that rescued 25 girls from a bar near VIP Road. The girls had been trafficked from Haryana, Punjab, Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh, a reversal of the usual trend in which girls from West Bengal are trafficked in the north. “The problem,” Banerjee says, “is that while bar owners can be booked for a show of obscenity in public, the offence is bailable. There are non-bailable sections for trafficking, but a senior cop of deputy superintendent rank or above has to lodge the complaint on the basis of which arrests and seizures are made
and investigations started. But there are over 100 bars in the northern outskirts and it isn’t humanly possible for senior police officers to keep track of what is happening in these bars when there are more pressing problems at hand.”
Bishakha Datta, who runs the NGO Point of View, argues that “rather than focusing on the obscenity issue, the emphasis should be on providing safe working conditions for women, whether they are being financially exploited or not, their right to safe mobility, whether clients are taking a lunge at them or harassing them, just like in any other profession”.
The first alarm against these bars in Kolkata was raised in March 2015, when 21-year-old Twinkle and her 18-year-old sister Rosy Rajput lodged an FIR with the Baguiati police station against their employer for forcing them to entertain a client who tried to rape them. The girls alleged that they were brought to Kolkata by a Manu Agnihotri, who promised them a job and placed them in a flat in Chinar Park. Girls from the north of the country are of particular appeal here. SDPO Banerjee says that “analysis of what FIRs there are show that the majority of girls are trafficked from north India. The bait is an office job or housekeeping at a hotel. Very rarely are victims able to file a complaint because they are kept under tight surveillance, but when they do, it is because they are being denied a ‘fair’ share of the profits”. Sometimes dancers turn to NGOs. “When we cannot take it anymore,” says Pooja Singh (name changed) from Punjab, “when a band leader exploits us, for instance, we seek help despite the risk of being murdered. One friend of mine contracted a venereal disease, and the bar owner, instead of having her treated, fired her without notice and without pay.”
Accurate statistics about trafficking are hard to come by, but the Kolkata police maintain that most girls from out of the state are brought to the city under false pretence. The money, though, motivates many to keep going. And the profits for everyone, from
OPERATING UNDER THE TECHNICALITY OF ‘CROONING LICENCES’, GRANTED AT THE DISCRETION OF THE POLICE DEPARTMENT, DANCE BARS ARE VULNERABLE TO RAIDS