Delhi’s Gymkhana Club is a topic of conversation these days, after the Government of India asked it to vacate its premises by June.
The club’s members and employees have hit back, wanting to stay. The club itself has appealed to the Delhi High Court, wanting the Centre to reverse the directive and allow them to keep the land.
Now, while the immediate dispute is about land, defence infrastructure, and lease deeds, the controversy has shed light on something older and considerably darker: the existence of these colonial-era clubs in India, what they stood for, what they still stand for, and the discriminatory rules they still run by even after almost 80 years since Independence.
Shashi Tharoor’s experience as a kid has also been going viral, just bringing into question whether these clubs should even be allowed to exist in our country if colonial rules still run them.
What Is Happening With Delhi’s Gymkhana Club?
In case anyone is unaware, there has been a legal controversy ongoing regarding the club and the Centre.
On May 22, 2026, the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs issued an order, through the Land and Development Office (L&DO), directing the Delhi Gymkhana Club to vacate its sprawling 27.3-acre premises at 2, Safdarjung Road, New Delhi, and hand over possession by June 5, 2026.
According to the L&DO’s letter to the club cited by The Print, they stated that the land is “Whereas it has been determined that the said premises, located in a highly sensitive and strategic area of Delhi, is critically required for the strengthening and securing of defence infrastructure and other vital public security purposes.
The land is essential to fulfill urgent institutional needs, governance infrastructure, and public interest projects, integrated with the resumption of adjoining government lands.”
The legal basis for this decision was invoked through Clause 4 of the original perpetual lease deed signed in 1928 between the government and what was then the Imperial Delhi Gymkhana Club Ltd.
This particular clause allows the government, as lessor, to terminate the lease and re-enter the premises if the land is required for a public purpose.
As per reports, the Centre stated, “…. in exercise of the powers conferred under Clause 4 of the Lease Deed, the President of India, through the Land and Development Office, hereby determines the lease and orders re-entry of the aforesaid premises with immediate effect.”
The Delhi Gymkhana Club appealed to the Delhi High Court on May 25, 2026, challenging the order.
They inquired if there was an “appropriately located alternate plot of land” and how “In addition to the members and their interests, the future of all permanent and other employees and staff of the club needs to be protected.”
Barring all the issues this already brings up, particularly that of the lease that has remained consistent at just Rs 1,000 since 1928, even though the location itself is among the most luxurious and valuable of Delhi, the fact that the club owes Rs 47 crore in dues, including tax liabilities, has to be talked about.
Reports have over the years estimated that the waiting period for the club is about 37 years, with a fee of Rs 7.5 lakh.
Then the registration fee itself for government officials and non-government applicants is Rs 4.5 lakh and Rs 18.91 lakh, and membership fees to be paid by each are Rs 5 lakh and Rs 22 lakh, as per reports.
Why is it that a club with almost Rs 28 crores worth of fixed bank deposits from existing and waitlisted members, and a daily income of Rs 7.5 lakh as per a 2021 Moneycontrol report, has this much in dues to the government?
Shashi Tharoor, And The Breach Candy Club
In light of the recent controversy with Gymkhana, and that there doesn’t seem to be an innocent side in all this, the spotlight has further shifted to the very existence of these clubs.
Many of these so-called status quo clubs around the country were built during the 200-year-long colonial era, when India was under the British Empire’s rule.
Congress leader Shashi Tharoor’s own experience at one, where he was thrown out of it for just being Indian, has gone viral. The reason it did so is that the incident happened decades after the country had gained its independence.
In 2018, Congress leader Shashi Tharoor spoke at an author meet organised by Kalam Club at Taj Bengal, Kolkata. There, he spoke about the colonial hangover that the country still has.
He mentioned two clubs, the Calcutta Club, located on Lower Circular Road in Kolkata and the Breach Candy Club, officially known as the Breach Candy Swimming Bath Trust, in Mumbai.
Tharoor said, “The Calcutta Club swimming pool was all white even in the late ’60s, till a newly elected CPM minister led a posse of 25 unwashed villagers from his constituency into the pool. I myself was thrown out of Breach Candy Club in Bombay in the mid ’60s when an American classmate hoped he could ignore the whites and take an Indian friend along…. That was India 20 years after Independence.”
Tharoor mentioned the incident in his book The Elephant, The Tiger and the Cellphone, writing, “As a child, I was thrown out of the Breach Candy swimming pool in Mumbai for being an Indian, a state of existence my innocent American host had not imagined would pose a problem in India.”
Breach Candy Club was founded in 1878 under the British Colonial rule, as a space only for the European residents of Mumbai (then known as Bombay).
Around five acres of land were donated by the then Secretary of State for India, along with the shore, for the project.
Over the years, known as a symbol of privilege and exclusivity, its amenities increased to include “indoor and outdoor swimming pools, restaurants, a gymnasium, a reading room, and facilities for tennis, basketball, and volleyball,” as per a Firstpost report.
Some reports have also claimed that the design of the outdoor swimming pool at the club was in the shape of British India.
During the British Raj, it wasn’t exactly unusual for such clubs to exclude Indian residents; however, resentment grew when the European-only rule of the institution stayed in place even after India gained Independence in 1947.
It took a long time, though, with Indian residents being allowed to apply for ordinary membership only in the 1960s.
As per an Irish Times report, the Breach Candy Club also had a ‘dogs and Indians not allowed’ sign posted at its entrance even after independence.
The change in rules, though, did not seem to apply to the club’s core power structure. A Moneycontrol report stated that, as per a 2023 report, “Indians were not allowed voting or management power of the club,” and that till date management is “almost out of bounds for ‘plain-vanilla’ Indians.”
As per a Business Today report, the club’s “constitution, approved by the City Civil Court in 1967, divides members into categories and grants control to trust members limited to ‘European inhabitants of Bombay’. Only trust members can become trustees or serve on the managing committee. This gives them control over admissions, finances, and club policies.”
According to a 2013 Economic Times report, the club’s membership fee is fixed at Rs 1 crore, plus a 12.36% service tax, bringing the total to nearly Rs 1.12 crore.
The Racist Past Of Gymkhana And Other Colonial Clubs
Gymkhana has had a long, dark and racist history behind it.
In a July 2014 article written by Lt Col Anil Bhat for Salute Magazine, an Indian publication focused on defence, the armed forces, and national security issues, the club’s history was also touched upon.
He wrote how Indian ICS (Indian Civil Services) officers were often not taken seriously or accepted unless they took up “Eggs, sausages and mash for breakfast, learning to do the foxtrot and ballroom dancing, emptying glasses of Bloody Marys on a Sunday afternoon.”
He also pointed out that during that time, the total number of ICS officers never exceeded 1300.
Bhat wrote clearly that despite all their efforts to fit in with the British members, the Indian ICS officers were never considered equal.
He further stated, “Even Lord Mountbatten, as the last Governor-General in 1946 who opened the Viceregal House to more and more Indians when hosting evenings for ICS officers, would split the party venue by keeping Indian civil servants in the lawns while hosting the English inside the building.”
The Royal Bombay Yacht Club, established in 1846, also became the direct motivation for Lord Willingdon, who was appointed Governor of Bombay in 1913, to establish an alternative.
Until the 1950s, entry to the club was, as usual, restricted to only the Europeans.
During his tenure in India, it is said that Lord Willingdon attempted to take some Indian friends to the club. However, the British administrator became outraged when they were denied entry and resigned his membership soon after.
He didn’t stop just there, though, instead going on to be the founder of the Willingdon Sports Club that had an explicit no-colour-bar policy.
As per an Open Magazine report, “After Stanley Reed told him that he could not force existing clubs such as the Byculla and the Yacht Club to alter their rules, he decided to set up a new one. Funded by donations from British residents and Indian princes, the Willingdon Sports Club opened its doors to British and Indian membership in November 1917.”
The Calcutta Club was also founded in 1907 as a direct response to the Bengal Club’s racism, the latter of which was considered to be the “unofficial headquarters of the Raj”.
According to a 2021 article, ‘British Clubs in India and Reinforcement of British National/Imperial Identity: Tom Stoppard’s Indian Ink’ published on ResearchGate, The Bengal Club, established in 1827, “was the first club in India and included only British and male inhabitants.”
The club’s origins were insulting, as it was created because, according to Colonel Finch, the club’s first president, ‘nothing like a respectable hotel or coffee-house… existed’ in Calcutta.
According to GetBengal, an online portal dedicated to West Bengal, “The formation of the Calcutta Club was due to an incident that took place at the Bengal Club when well-known Bengali entrepreneur Rajendranath Mookherjee was the guest of the then Governor of Bengal, Sir John Woodburn.
Sir John was asked to take his Indian guest to the ante-room as the European members of the Bengal Club could not then think of having an Indian at the main dining hall.”
Rajendranath Mookherjee was one of Bengal’s most prominent industrialists and the founder of the engineering conglomerate that later became Martin Burn Ltd.
The Calcutta Club, thus, became one of the first clubs in India without an explicitly racial membership policy. However, the membership was still restricted to males, and it just started admitting female members in 2007.
The article further stated that these clubs, beyond just being familiar spaces for Europeans and British nationals living in India to experience, also worked “as a space that stresses the submissive nature and marginalised and ‘inferior’ positions of the ‘non-European’ in the hierarchical system.”
As per a 2018 Open Magazine article, titled ‘Class, Race and the Colonial Clubs of India’, “One senior political officer resigned from his club in the 1880s when, according to his grandson, ‘he heard of a proposal to admit engineers and forest officers’.”
In another incident related to the Saturday Club in Calcutta, founded in 1875, a man was blackballed after he resigned and reapplied, because “some of the members must have believed his new wife to be either Anglo-Indian or ‘country-bred’ or perhaps just English and rather ‘common’.”
Image Credits: Google Images
Sources: The Indian Express, Moneycontrol, The Economic Times
Find the blogger: @chirali_08
This post is tagged under: Gymkhana, delhi Gymkhana club, Gymkhana club membership, Gymkhana membership fees, gymkhana club history, gymkhana club news, gymkhana club controversy, Breach Candy club, Breach Candy club mumbai, Breach Candy club shashi tharoor, colonial era clubs india, gentlemen’s clubs in India
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