Kolkata’s Club Culture Reeks of Elitism and a Colonial Hangover, and It’s Time to Retire It

Come winter, all of Kolkata loses its mind. Park Street is decorated with lights so bright you're convinced NASA can take a picture, school kids are trying to figure out what to wear to their school's Christmas party, restaurants start making their Christmas cakes, Nahoum's is flooded with orders for their plum cakes, and all the hormone-driven adolescents are trying to find someone who is a member at Calcutta Club, so that they can get passes for the annual Bakery Carnival.

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You're probably wondering how an increase in a liking for baked goods is related to hormones. I'll explain. The annual Bakery Carnival is a carnival that happens at the Calcutta Club. There's food, there's alcohol, some sort of performers, and a bunch of people who get dressed up to eat, drink, and make polite conversation. No, all of Kolkata cannot go, because it's an exclusive event, with passes that are given out to members only. If you're not a member, you have to ask someone who is a member to get you a pass. If you can't, well, you're clearly not good enough to go.



The city is full of these elite clubs, with membership waiting lists that stretch so long they may actually be longer than I've been around. There's the Bengal Club, which has apparently existed since 1827, the Calcutta Club since 1907, the Tollygunge Club, Dalhousie Club, Saturday Club, and so on.

Fun fact: The Calcutta Club was created because Indians resented the fact that membership to the Bengal Club was only open to non-Indians, but it's ironic that they lead the charge in keeping the elitism it fought against, intact. In fact, the Calcutta Club didn't even allow female members till as recently as 2007.

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The entire country, especially Bengalis, rose up in anger when Dilashi Hemnani wanted to take her driver for a meal at Mocambo, and was denied a table because the driver was apparently improperly dressed. When Vagabomb spoke to Mocambo's management, we were told that they couldn't let a “roadsider” in, especially one “wearing one pant and shirt.” Many opinion pieces were written about the social divide, how drivers and ayahs were never really considered part of the family, but how could that happen, when there exists a thriving culture of elitism that keeps peers out of buildings that are considered hallowed for some obscure reason?



Kolkata thrives on nostalgia, and India is slowly coming back to its roots. More and more adolescents are rejecting Western dressing in favour of Indian, and when they do wear Western clothes, they'll make sure to Indianise it in some way so their identity as desi is clear. The point I'm trying to get at is, desi is cool, desi is hip, desi is in right now. Walk into a posh club in Kolkata dressed in a kurta and sandals, and you'll soon be enlightened that desi may be cool outside, but inside the sacred grounds of Kolkata's elite clubs, it is not.

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For those wondering, nothing special happens in these clubs. There are restaurants, there may be a pool or two, there will be large lawns, a tennis court—nothing you can't get outside. But it's the illusion of exclusivity they provide that you won't get anywhere else. It also gives you a sense of entitlement, and the misguided notion that you are somehow, in some unknown, undefined way, better than that friend who cannot eat at that specific table.



Bengalis divide the whole world into two—Bengalis and non-Bengalis. There is no community as proud of their culture as Bengalis are, and rightly so. One should be proud of their culture, one that so intrinsically makes them who they are. But when a part of your culture goes against what you stand for, when it rejects this Bangaliana, when it turns you away for dressing in the very thing foreign cultures try so hard to emulate, when it refuses to let you be proud of your culture, and that too, right in the heart of the city, it is time to reject it too. It may have been a number of years since boards outside clubs read “Dogs and Indians not allowed here,” but we haven't come a long way from there.