<b>Sunanda K Datta-Ray:</b> Closed user group

Clubs as private institutions make their own rules and can't be dictated to by those who don't belong, as judge D Hariparanthaman should have realised

Jawaharlal Nehru may or may not have been blackballed by the Allahabad Club before he turned to politics (as some chroniclers claim) but Mahatma Gandhi had no hang-ups. Soothing my great-aunt Nellie Sen-Gupta when other Congress folk were attacking her husband, Deshapriya Jatin Sen-Gupta, for socialising at the Calcutta Club, Gandhi made a surprising confession. "I wish I was a member of the Calcutta Club whose members, I know, are all decent people," he wrote.

Like any institution to which the public doesn't have automatic access, clubs inspire excited but uninformed gossip. Someone remarked a propos of the Tamil Nadu Cricket Association Club row, for instance, that some clubs forbid sarees! Even London's Daily Telegraph reported that "Gopalkrishna Gandhi, grandson of Mahatma Gandhi, declined an invitation (to the Calcutta Club) because he was not allowed to wear a baggy-shirt kurta". As governor of West Bengal, Gopal did refuse to go to the Calcutta Club, but only because it didn't admit women members then. Attire didn't come into it.

At a time when Westerners are dressing down, some Indians can't forget their Raj complexes. They find the easiest way of flaunting their nationalistic credentials is by dressing defiantly. A Bengali poet I once invited to join me in a smart bar promptly changed the trousers and shirt he was wearing for a lungi and shawl. He had to strike a pose. Posturing apart, if some citizens get together to form an association whose members wear pajamas for meetings, no other citizen can muscle in and say, "I insist on joining your group but I refuse to wear pajamas, which are foreign. I'll wear baggy shorts like the RSS. They are swadeshi!" That tramples on individual rights and freedom of association.

I was very glad to read, therefore, that the Madras High Court had shot down a public interest petition against the Tamil Nadu Cricket Association Club because it hadn't violated any constitutional provision. Now, if Judge D Hariparanthaman and the two advocates who were refused entry were truly mindful of their dignity, they would do two things. They would at once stop their supporters among Madras advocates from making a spectacle of themselves by wearing dhotis with black coats. A dhoti is a perfectly respectable garment but shouldn't be abused as a symbol of protest. Second, they must warn J Jayalalithaa that besides being petty, legislation on the matter would infringe personal freedom. Pandering to the gallery might earn cheap applause but being morally wrong would expose her to ridicule.

Returning to Nehru, one episode has always made me wonder if there wasn't some truth in the Allahabad Club story. When my uncle, Mohie Das, then president of the Oxford and Cambridge Society, invited Nehru to a reunion dinner at the Calcutta Club, the prime minister's acceptance stressed he was not attending the Calcutta Club but only a university reunion that was taking place there. Mohie mama proudly showed me a photograph of him - and not the club president - receiving Nehru.

Gandhi probably wouldn't have drawn the distinction. His dignity wasn't so easily shattered. Disregarding racial slights, he allowed himself to be smuggled into a bedroom of the whites-only Bengal Club by a Daily Telegraph correspondent. But, of course, Gandhi was also canny enough to value coverage in Britain.

My favourite club story also involves Nehru but to his credit. Eric Newby, the well-known English travel writer, says when he and his wife sought accommodation at the Kanpur Club during their 1,200-mile journey down the Ganga, the secretary said only a permanent member could propose him for temporary membership. Newby didn't know any. His trump card - a letter of introduction from Nehru - cut no ice. "The prime minister is not a member of the Kanpur Club," the secretary said.

Leave alone Narendra Modi, I wonder if Jayalalithaa or Akhilesh Yadav would relish a club in Chennai or Allahabad adopting a similarly independent stance. But, then, not many visitors would display Newby's placidity. Having been brought up in a world of clubs, he didn't throw a tantrum, rant and rave about "racism", "feudalism" and "colonialism", organise a protest or rush to lawyers and politicians. "We crept out of the building, boarded the waiting ricksha [sic] and were pedalled away," Newby wrote in his delightful memoirs.

He recognised clubs as private institutions that make their own rules and can't be dictated to by those who don't belong. Members alone can change rules according to a prescribed democratic procedure.