Late last year, the golf and polo clubs in the heart of Jaipur in what is designated a green public area were faced with an existential threat when in response to a petition, the high court cancelled their liquor licences and ordered them to close by 8 pm. The petitioner's contention was that they were sporting clubs, not watering holes, existing on official say-so.
Of course the social elite, of which their lordships are a part, looks after itself and the licence was soon restored.
What happened in Tamil Nadu thereafter was more serious. A judge was denied entry into a club because he was wearing a vesti (dhoti) which was against the dress code that obviously had not changed since 1947. All hell broke loose and the state government passed a law which allowed national dress for club members. The Chennai clubs, to my mind, asked for it. The Kolkata clubs have done much better. Dhoti and punjabi (kurta), the signature attire of the Bengali bhadralok, is allowed but not pajamas (churidar or aligarhi of the Hindi belt).
Slippers that go flip flop, the sort that the hoi polloi wear, are also not allowed. There must be a strap around the ankle, putting it in the category of sandal shoe. (Imagine a club operative lifting someone's dhoti to see if his footwear is as per rules!) Some clubs still do not allow jeans. The biggest irony is that there is effectively no dress restriction on women and nobody can recall someone being turned away for looking unladylike. Scantily dressed women are not just allowed but, I suspect, secretly welcomed by the predominantly male memberships.
The unintended consequence of the Tamil Nadu action was that it gave ideas to politicians of some other states eager to forget that a club is, after all, a private association of like-minded people. What they do to themselves is nobody's business, except if they are sitting on public land. The Jaipur and Kolkata clubs around the Dhakuria lakes are, though Bangalore Club is not.
The Bengaluru gentry is worked up because the Karnataka government, taking the cue from Tamil Nadu, has put up for discussion a draft Bill that seeks to regulate the conduct of clubs. The liquor licence of Bangalore Club has also been cancelled on a technicality. The provocation for this was a fracas over the car of a police officer being stopped while it was trying to take a shortcut through the club. Cancelling the liquor licence is a pressure tactic, meant to get club members to fall in line with the proposed Bill which critically will allow politicians the right to club membership.
While these heated arguments go on, no one has made an issue of a relatively new financial development involving these clubs. To keep themselves in fine financial fettle some of them have stipulated a minimum spending per period. (There is sometimes some concession for old members.) Others keep raising the entrance fee for new members to what is now astronomical levels. The combined effect is, if you are not really cash rich then you better move on. At this rate the clubs will mostly have the new well-to-do instead of some of the old well-to-do also as members. If a member does not like the way things are going, all he has to do is up and leave.
By far the best line on upscale social clubs was uttered by one of the greatest comedians of the modern era, Groucho Marx. On resigning from one such club, he is reported to have said: I don't care to belong to a club that accepts people like me as members.
I joined a sporting club in Kolkata a few years ago without knowing a thing about its signature sport. I have tried to salvage my conscious by trying to argue with fellow club members that since we are located in one of the greenest parts of the city, let's do something about our immediate environment. That way we will have some social commitment to show for ourselves. But the environment agenda remains non-existent.
Every time I protest among friends against a new threat of attack on the flora and fauna of the club's surroundings, I am taunted by some: If you think it is so bad why don't you resign from the club in protest against all the wrong things that all the clubs in the area are up to? That is when the Grouch Marx quote comes back to bug me.