<p>This paper examines the 2005 ban on bar dancing in Maharashtra, which displaced nearly 75,000 women, situating the practice within the longer history of caste-embedded sexual labour in India. While feminist debates frame sex work through abolitionist and regulationist lenses, both approaches remain inadequate in the Indian context, where Dalit and lower-caste women’s sexuality has historically been shaped by caste hierarchies and ritualized practices such as the Devadasi and Jogini systems. By tracing continuities between caste-based forms of erotic performance and contemporary bar dance, the paper highlights how regulation reproduces caste exploitation while abolition erodes the livelihoods of marginalized women. It critically e ngages with dominant theoretical perspectives that oppose the bar dance ban, interrogates the state’s ideology toward women in the sexual entertainment industry, and examines the political and ideological positions of the Ambedkarite Dalit movement in relation to Dalit women engaged in bar dance and traditional religious identities involving sexual labour.</p>