7 Maharajas as lifetime members, decades-old waitlist: Story of Delhi Gymkhana Club
The Union government has now asked the iconic club in Lutyens' Delhi to vacate its premises by June 5 for defence and security-related purposes.
A car is seen entering the Delhi Gymkhana Club, in New Delhi, Saturday, May 23, 2026. The Centre has asked Gymkhana Club in Lutyens' Delhi to hand over the premises by June 5, citing that the 27.3-acre plot was required for "strengthening and securing defence infrastructure". (PTI Photo) It outlasted the colonial era, the India-Pakistan Partition, and governments than most of its members can count. The story of the Delhi Gymkhana Club goes back to 1911 when India was under British rule — King George V announced the transfer of the imperial capital from Calcutta, which is now known as Kolkata, to Delhi. A new version of the city had to be conjured up, and with it, its social infrastructure.
By 1913, the Imperial Delhi Gymkhana Club had taken shape, conceived for the military garrison of the new capital. Seven Maharajas, including that of Gwalior, Jaipur, Jodhpur, Kashmir, Udaipur, Kishangarh, and the Nawab of Bhopal, were made life members for their role in founding it. The polo ground nearby at Kingsway was, in those early years, practically an extension of its lawns. It became a separate entity only in the 1930s.
The Union government has now asked the iconic club in Lutyens’ Delhi to vacate its premises by June 5 for defence and security-related purposes.
The current building — designed by iconic British architect Robert Tor Russel — came up on Safdarjung Road in the early 1930s.
Russell, who also designed Connaught Place and Teen Murti Place, where India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru later lived, was particular about the club complementing the flat-roofed bungalows rising across the road, and stayed on the general committee through the decade.
Even the swimming pool at the club has an interesting backstory. There wasn’t a swimming pool at the club until Lady Willingdon, the wife of former Viceroy Lord Willingdon, an enthusiastic swimmer, grew tired of relying on other pools around New Delhi for a swim. She eventually gifted Rs 21,000 for the pool and squash courts.
The grateful committee had tablets installed, “Lady Willingdon Swimming Bath” and “The Willingdon Squash Courts,” just in time for the couple’s farewell visit on March 16, 1936.
In its heyday, the club was used more for colonial social navigation. Indian ICS (Indian Civil Services) officers, the select few who cracked one of the world’s most competitive services, had to master the foxtrot, nurse Bloody Marys on Sunday afternoons, and swap their usual breakfast for eggs and sausages if they wanted to be taken seriously at the club. Tennis courts doubled as career ladders.
Even Lord Mountbatten, in 1946, kept Indian civil servants on the lawns while the English gathered inside the building. Access was granted. Equality was not.
When the country was undergoing Partition, officers from regiments — that would soon belong to two separate nations — drank together one last time, trading stories before the lines hardened forever.
After Independence, the “Imperial” was quietly dropped from the name. Nehru became Vice-Patron. Jodhpurs replaced tuxedos, dal was served alongside the roast mutton, and eventually Chinese and Thai cuisines got their own dining rooms. The waiting list for membership, meanwhile, grew longer. Some applicants from the 1970s are reportedly still on it.
The Land and Development Office under the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs wrote to the Club’s Secretary on Friday initiating the “re-entry and resumption of premises comprising Delhi Gymkhana Club, 2, Safdarjung Road, New Delhi”. As per Clause 4 of the lease deed, the premises can be re-entered, which means that the government can take back the leased property, if it or any part of it is required for a public purpose.
The Club had already been through a bruising few years before Friday’s notice landed. In February 2021, the National Company Law Tribunal ordered the suspension of the elected club committee over allegations of financial and membership mismanagement. Members have had little say in the Club’s affairs since.
On the latest development, Major Atul Dev, a senior member who has been involved in fighting legal cases on behalf of the membership, said, “We got a notice from the Land and Development Office talking about taking over — a 13-day order, no advanced warning, no reasons whatsoever, no violation of lease cited, nothing at all.”
Major Dev claimed, “This land is owned by us. We purchased it. But when it was purchased. They did not allow the land to be transferred to the owner’s name, so they gave a perpetual lease instead. We have been paying the lease amount regularly. We are the actual owners of this land.” The Club’s response, he said, is straightforward: “We will be filing a petition and seeking a stay of the order.”
“This is definitely a landmark of Delhi,” said Yashovardhan Azad, a former IPS officer, who has also been a member at the club for 25 years. “People might say it was only for the influential – yet it remains a landmark. Unless there is a very pressing reason, I do not understand why a place like this would be demolished.”
Urban scholar Vandini Mehta identifies a pointed irony in the government’s move. “What I find fascinating,” she said, “is that a free, democratic nation is using the colonial leasehold framework — invented by the British precisely so they would never lose final control of land —to take back what has now become a public institution.”
Share
