Bollywood Scandal and 'Bar Dancer' Ban Reveals Gender Inequity

[Guest guest]

When [aging Bollywood actor] Shakti Kapoor was caught on camera

demanding sexual favours from a young girl [actually, a TV

journalist posing as an aspiring actress], India's male-dominated

chatterati screamed itself hoarse about the infringement of privacy

rights even as it sidelined the real issue: the long-standing

subordination of many Indian women through lop-sided economic and

social practices. Robbed thus of its broader significance, the

women's issue was then recast as an issue of personal morality. All

of this while the ordinary Indian woman did or said nothing in

protest.

 

Now, in an interesting extension of the morality question, when

Mumbai's bar dancers — women marginalised and exploited on various

grounds — are not only banned from eking out an independent

livelihood but also demonised by patriarchs in the Maharashtra

government as those who "corrupt" Mumbai's youth, the common Indian

woman once again shows little empathy, opting instead to remain

silent. [The ban went into effect this month, but is still a matter

of fierce debate: http://www.indiadaily.com/breaking_news/33285.asp ]

 

By refusing to acknowledge that bar dancers are not so much the

cause of societal corruption as they are a symptom of societal

injustice, she once again turns a blind eye to the sexual politics,

and allows society to pit one set of Indian women against another in

oversimplified equations of "us" versus "them": the wicked bar

dancer ensnaring the good woman's husband. And, doing so, she once

again allows Indian men to get away with a slap on their wrists,

while the hapless women, the bar dancers in this case, are dismissed

without any constructive solutions to lead a life of dignity.

 

In the absence of a robust university campus culture that teaches

women the difference between sex and gender; in the absence of a

public culture that stimulates young women to reassess the past and

the present from a female point of view; in the absence of inspiring

role models, it is for the common Indian woman to become her own

messiah. She must realise there is less glory in suffering stoically

than in fighting courageously for her own cause.

 

The time has come, in other words, when it is just not enough to go

around telling the world that India is one of the few civilisations

that awards equal status to a Mother Goddess, or where a woman has

become prime minister. What really matters is how ordinary Indian

women are treated in their everyday lives, how many opportunities

they have to access good education, health care, and jobs, how many

options they have to make independent decisions about their own

minds and bodies, how much respect they get from the enormous

contribution they make, albeit silently, to their homes and,

therefore, to society and the nation's economy.

 

Banning bar dancers from doing their job is an ill-conceived, band-

aid remedy that misses both the social and the economic points.

Cultural repression of this kind leads to increased demand that, in

turn, leads to the black market on the one hand and sex-related

crimes on the other.

 

SOURCE: The Indian Express: "Her side of the story: Banning bar

dancers from doing their job is an ill-conceived, band-aid remedy"

by NANDITA PATEL. Posted online Monday, April 25, 2005 at 0000 hours

IST.

URL: http://www.indianexpress.com/full_story.php?content_id=69043