I am indifferent to the Delhi Gymkhana club’s fate

The controversy over the Delhi Gymkhana reminds me how different people define elites.

And how our objections to clubs depend on our private resentments and prejudices.

 

Let’s take my own example. I am not a member of any of the so called Raj-era elite clubs. My reasons are hereditary.

 

   My father always refused to join any club with Raj roots. Most of the great, historic clubs in India were founded by the British Raj for itself. They were places where the white rulers of India entertained each other and where the only Indians allowed were waiters and cleaners.

 

  Till independence these clubs refused not just membership but also physical entry to Indians. In one version of the famous story where Jamsetji Tata was refused entry to a Mumbai club because he was brown - despite being a knight of the realm - the club in question was the Royal Bombay Yacht Club. In other versions of the story different establishments are named but the point remains the same: Jamsetji was so angry that he vowed to build the greatest hotel in India near the club and opened the Taj next door.

 

   The Taj hired white foreigners but they worked for Indian owners. And there was no colour bar though at one stage the Taj did put up a sign that read “No dogs and South Africans allowed.” (The South African ban was a response to that country’s apartheid policy.) Today, the Taj is world famous. The Yacht Club is mostly forgotten.

 

   My father found the colour-based discrimination deeply offensive and even when brown people were allowed in after Independence he refused to join any of these clubs professing contempt for the new members who rushed in to occupy the dining tables and tennis courts vacated by the Brits; places where our ancestors were once allowed to enter only if they were servants.

 

   Over time my father moderated his views to the extent that if someone he liked invited him to one of these Raj-era clubs he would do his whole flag-waving routine in private but would accept the invitation out of courtesy. But such occasions were rare.

 

   I inherited his prejudice. I am not a member of any Raj type club and very rarely accept an invitation to one of them. I haven’t visited a single Raj club in Mumbai, Bangalore or Chennai for years. In Delhi I have accepted the odd dinner invitation to the Golf Club but have not entered the Delhi Gym for at least five years if not more.

 

   My views are mostly shaped by the legacy of my father but I also endorse his prejudices about clubs where membership committees interview you to decide whether you are socially acceptable enough for them to allow you in. Socially acceptable? Don’t make me throw up.

 

   So am I delighted by the Delhi Gymkhana’s troubles? Actually, no. I am deeply indifferent to the club’s fate. I never go there. And its eventual fate makes no difference to my life. But the episode does make me wonder about the state of India today and about the gap between appearance and reality.

 

"Why should politicians, most of whom have access, to vast cash incomes be allowed to live like kings while retired government servants are turfed out of their clubs?"

   On the rare occasions I have been to the Delhi Gymkhana it has struck me as the last hangout of people who once were relatively important. It has been packed out with retired army officers, superannuated bureaucrats and people whose families once had money but can’t now afford to pay the extortionate prices at five star hotel bars. It has never ever struck me as being the home of the Deep State, the secret centre of power or a rich people’s playground.

 

   And yet if you follow the commentary on social media the Gymkhana is the beating heart of India’s wealthy and powerful elite. This characterisation is so far from reality as to be laughable. As is the suggestion that it is a Congress hangout, where Rahul Gandhi parks his helicopter and Sonia Gandhi runs a pizza counter. In fact I suspect that if the Gymkhana was an assembly constituency then the BJP would win as many middle class votes here as it does in the rest of Delhi. As it is, the club is now run by a government appointed committee so it is actually an extended arm of the BJP machine.

 

   This is the reality that social media seeks to obscure.

 

   People who have never been to Delhi treat the Gymkhana as the haunt of something that they have been told is called the Khan Market gang. This is also a misconception. Khan Market is where wealthy Delhi people would shop ten years ago before the luxury malls opened. Almost everyone who pulled out fistfuls of cash to shop there was probably a Modi supporter. They were not part of any powerful liberal establishment. And even the subtext to the term which is “English-speaking people we Sanghis should hate“ is misconceived. It’s hard to hear anything but Hindi or Punjabi in the Khan Market shops.

 

   So let’s skip the social media lies and ask ourselves a few questions.

 

   Firstly is the Delhi Gymkhana a hangover of the Raj? Yes it is. It opened in 1913 as the Imperial Delhi Gymkhana. Should that matter? Well, it does to people like me but that’s no more than a personal prejudice. You can’t make prejudices the basis of public policy. If people like me don’t like Raj clubs we should refuse to join. We have no right to ask others not to join, let alone call for the clubs to be shut down.

 

   Second, why do Sanghis get away with pretending that this is the centre of a ruling elite. Well, because many people are stupid or ignorant. The Gymkhana has never been more than a club for senior government employees. Exact figures are hard to come by but something like 80 per cent of the club’s membership has usually consisted of civil servants and armed forces officers. Only 20 per cent of the members are privately employed which is why it is so hard to get in. As the bureaucrats and army officers retire they tend to spend more and more time at the club and determine its character.

 

   Third, does the club pay market rent? No, of course it doesn’t. It was created for government officers who continue to earn lower salaries than their counterparts in the private sector and get by on relatively modest pensions when they retire. It was one way of making up the salary discrepancy.

 

   Is this unfair? May be. But then do ministers need to live in these large bungalows at tax payers’ expense? Do they need these huge motorcades? Should they be using private planes?

 

   My view is that if you care about government servants (and especially retired officers) getting a club of their own then you must also evict ministers from their bungalows and make them drive around in small cars without these huge convoys.

 

   Why should politicians, most of whom have access (should they want it), to vast cash incomes be allowed to live like kings while retired government servants are turfed out of their clubs? You can’t have one set of standards for the political class and another for everyone else.

 

   Four: is this the end for the club? I don’t think so. Well, not yet at any rate. The club has been involved in battles with the government for a while now (which is why the committee that runs it is government-appointed) and the legal battle over the attempted takeover will continue for a while.

 

   Five: why is there so much nonsense about the club being a bastion of the liberal establishment?

 

   Well, because the BJP has always resorted to the same narrative in its appeal to its middle class supporters: India is run by a privileged English-educated elite that has ignored the interests of Bharat. Though the BJP government has electorally defeated these people they still constitute some kind of deep state and try and sabotage the New India.

 

   This narrative is now wearing a bit thin. The BJP has been unchallenged in power for a dozen years. Its members occupy the bungalows of Lutyens Delhi and the media bows to their will. Who is going to believe them when they talk about the threat from the ‘Lutyens elite’ when they themselves are now the Lutyens elite?

 

   I have no idea why they have decided to take over the Delhi Gymkhana. I doubt if it is only to distract their supporters from the worrying headlines we see, as some people have suggested. Other distractions are available which do not involve indicating to the armed forces and civil servants that only the political class deserves to keep its benefits.

 

   No doubt we will get a better idea of the government’s motives as time goes on. And I am sceptical of how much the country will believe this nonsense about battling the liberal establishment.

 

   As I read about the Delhi Gymkhana’s struggle to survive I wondered what my club-hating father would have made of this battle. I suspect his reaction would have been the same as mine. As much as he loathed brown sahib clubs, he hated governmental dadagiri and over-reach even more.