'Don't dismantle, reform': Swapna Liddle on Gymkhana's future

New Delhi: Amid legal battles over several of Delhi’s legacy institutions — including the Ambassador Hotel, the Indian Polo Ground and now the Delhi Gymkhana Club, all facing eviction proceedings — a modest audience gathered at a basement venue in CR Park on Friday to hear historian and author Swapna Liddle argue that the debate must move beyond binaries of colonialism and privilege to examine history, purpose and heritage.The lecture was organised as part of Neighborhood Diaries, an initiative of the non-profit organisation Shapno Ekhon.Liddle said the Gymkhana Club’s colonial origins alone cannot determine its future. Founded in 1913 as the Imperial Delhi Gymkhana Club after the capital shifted from Calcutta to Delhi, it was initially reserved for British officials and a handful of Indian royals. After 1947, the “Imperial” prefix was dropped and the club evolved into a hub for India’s administrative establishment. “If you wanted to maintain a civil service that attracted the brightest young people in the country, what was there to offer them?” Liddle asked, explaining that “other perks, alongside salary, had to continue”, making institutions like Gymkhana Club part of the post-Independence bureaucratic ecosystem.Weighing in on the charge of elitism, Liddle said exclusivity should be debated more consistently, rather than only in the context of colonial-era institutions, when many contemporary spaces also remain inaccessible to large sections of society.She said the meaning of privilege itself has evolved over time. “Today, many of the people who use the club are retired civil servants and retired armed forces officers. They had gone through a competitive process and enjoyed certain privileges during their careers. But they can hardly be called today’s privileged elite, because today’s elite often do not use these clubs,” she said.Instead of dismantling such institutions, she advocated a middle path. “If you remove the building altogether, you are not only taking away a privilege, but also taking away the opportunity for others to use and experience the space.”Liddle argued that the present controversy must also be viewed through the lens of heritage and urban planning. The Gymkhana Club stands on leasehold land, an arrangement shared by several of Delhi’s older institutions, and forms part of Lutyens’ New Delhi’s low-rise, low-density garden city, protected under the Delhi Building Bye-laws. Redevelopment of such spaces, she cautioned, could come at the cost of the capital’s mature tree cover and built heritage.Reform was preferable to demolition, Liddle said, adding that “the question of reform has been a subject for a long time among the members of the club itself.” Greater public access could be a way forward rather than doing away with the institution altogether, she added. “If the concern is about privilege, then perhaps the answer is to make such institutions more accessible... We should think about ways of restructuring such institutions so that more people can benefit from them.”