Delhi's historic Gymkhana Club faces eviction as government reclaims 'strategic' land

The Gymkhana Club sits on Safdarjung Road in Delhi like a fragment of another era—cream-coloured walls, deep verandahs, the kind of place where power has moved quietly for over a century through whisky sodas and kebabs, through the careful rituals of gatekeeping and inherited access. Last week, the federal government ordered it to leave by June 5th, declaring the 27.3 acres beneath it strategically vital for defence infrastructure near the prime minister's residence. The lease, the government said, was terminated with immediate effect. Now the club's members are fighting in court, and Delhi is grappling with something larger than real estate—the possible erasure of one of the last places where an older version of the city still breathes.

The Gymkhana was founded in 1913 as the Imperial Delhi Gymkhana Club, emerging as the British shifted India's capital from Kolkata. It began at the Coronation Grounds in Civil Lines, serving administrators and military officers, before relocating to Safdarjung Road in 1928. The current clubhouse, designed in the 1930s by British architect Robert Tor Russell—who also designed Connaught Place—carries the aesthetic of early central Delhi: high ceilings, pale façades, lawns and trees. Inside, time moved differently. Tennis whites dried in afternoon sun. Bridge rooms held the faint smell of cigarettes and talcum powder. Elderly members read newspapers beneath slow ceiling fans. In the club's early decades, Indian Civil Service officers learned ballroom dancing and British social etiquette within its walls, navigating the codes of imperial society. In 1947, as the British Indian Army was divided between India and Pakistan, officers from regiments about to be separated gathered for farewell drinks—a final evening before history placed them on opposite sides of a border.

That image helps explain why the possible closure feels so emotional. The club became a repository of memory, carrying traces of different eras. During the final years of British rule and the early decades after independence, it remained closely connected to Delhi's political life. At the club's centenary celebrations in 2013, then President Pranab Mukherjee recalled that Mahatma Gandhi and Lord Irwin, the Viceroy of India, had met privately there, leading to the Gandhi-Irwin pact. After 1947, "Imperial" was dropped from the name, but the atmosphere remained: dress codes, old carpets, evening drinks, familiar waiters serving generations of the same families.

But the Gymkhana also became shorthand for inherited privilege. Membership was controlled less by price than by gatekeeping—applicants had to be proposed and seconded by existing members, then approved by a managing committee. The process favoured senior civil servants and defence officers. Waiting lists stretched across decades, becoming part of Delhi folklore. A retired Indian Police Service officer told the BBC it took him eighteen years to get in. "When I applied, I was fascinated by the idea," he said. "By the time I became one, I was totally indifferent and rarely visited it." Critics saw the club as a symbol of influence shaped by personal networks and family legacy, a place that sustained inequality even as it remained one of Delhi's most sought-after memberships.

That exclusivity increasingly drew scrutiny after Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government came to power in 2014, promising to shift power away from Delhi's long-established English-speaking elite. Following inspections in 2016 and 2019, the Ministry of Corporate Affairs approached a government tribunal in 2020, alleging financial irregularities and violations of membership rules. Two years later, the tribunal dissolved the club's elected governing committee and allowed the government to appoint administrators—a move that drew criticism from some members. The latest eviction order has divided opinion sharply. Kiran Bedi, a former top police officer and once a chief ministerial candidate for Modi's party, called it "unfortunate and tragic," describing the Gymkhana as part of the capital's sporting and institutional heritage. Historian Swapna Liddle acknowledged the club's elitist origins but said she would have preferred efforts to reform it rather than shut it down. "Instead of just saying 'let it not exist', you could have asked how it could be changed and made meaningful for more people," she said. A BJP spokesperson rejected suggestions of unfair targeting, saying the government was simply reclaiming its own property according to law.

Yet beneath the legal arguments runs something more emotional—a response tied to memory and loss in a city that is constantly remaking itself. Delhi residents carry private atlases of vanished places: Regal Cinema, the old Coffee House, Urdu bookshops in Daryaganj, winter evenings at India Gate before barricades reshaped the landscape. The Gymkhana was one of the few places that seemed to outlast that churn. It survived colonial rule, partition, independence, and Delhi's transformation into a sprawling megacity. A Delhi-based senior journalist who never had membership told the BBC the club always felt distant. "But now I feel like stepping in once. It is one of the few structures in Delhi that has remained untouched while the city outside changed completely," he said. Ghazal Tansir, a doctor who visited for her wedding reception in 2019, described it as "a preserved, undisturbed little nook of memories."

On Tuesday, the Delhi High Court heard the case. The federal government told the court it would not immediately take over the land on June 5th, and any eviction would come only after providing proper legal notice. The judge said the club, its staff and members could return to challenge the eviction. If the club ultimately loses its home, Delhi will still have newer clubs, finer hotels, louder restaurants. But it may lose something less visible: one of the last places where an old version of the city still felt alive, where different generations had left their mark in intimate ways, where the weight of history lingered in the shade of neem trees.