Flavia Agnes Lecture

"State Control and Sexual Morality -
The Case of the Bar Dancers of Mumbai"


by Flavia Agnes

This public lecture will address the concerns of women who danced in bars in Mumbai and the issue of public morality which led to a ban on bar dancing. The lecture will discern the contradictory pulls and diverse feminist positions which were foregrounded in the campaign and
the various legal issues which were raised in the Public Interest Litigation before the Bombay High Court. The entire campaign will be traced through Agnes's own engagement with this issue.

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Flavia Agnes is a lawyer at the Bombay High Court and founder of Majlis, a legal and cultural resource centre in Mumbai, India. She is a relentless advocate of gender equality through the law and a staunch critic of the Uniform Civil Code. Agnes appeared before the Sri Krishna Commission enquiry into the 1992 riots in the Indian cities of Mumbai and Berhampada. She has written and published extensively, including in the journals Subaltern Studies, Economic and Political Weekly, and Manushi on the themes of minorities and the law, feminist jurisprudence, gender and law, and law in the context of women's movements. She is author of the book, Law and Gender Inequality: the Politics of Women's Rights in India, published by Oxford University Press (1999).




Friday, November 6, 2009

2:00-3:30 pm

30 Hubert Humphrey Hall