B
y Justice Markandey Katju
A controversy is going on about the Delhi Gymkhana Club, about which I wrote this article :
Since then facts are being revealed about other such clubs for the 'elite' and affluent in almost all towns in India.The latest revelation is about the Breach Candy Club in Mumbai and the Delhi Golf Club in Delhi.
Names and details of various other such 'elitist clubs' in Indian cities are given below
I am not going into the legality of the claim of such clubs which stand on government-owned land, such as the Delhi Gymkhana Club or the Breach Candy Club, to oppose eviction if the government wants to resume the land on which they stand.
The question is of morality. Should we allow such clubs to continue to exist, with extremely limited membership, which cater to the pleasure and gratification of India's elite and wealthy, when our vast masses are living in terrible misery, amidst abject poverty, record and rising unemployment, appalling level of child malnutrition ( every second child in India is malnourished, stunted and wasted, according to Global Hunger Index, and the situation has got worse in recent years ), skyrocketing prices of essential commodities such as food and fuel, almost total lack of proper healthcare and good education for the masses, etc ? ?
In a famous passage in his 1755 work 'Discourse on the Origin and Basis of Inequality among Men', the great French political philosopher Rousseau wrote " It is surely contrary to the law of nature that a handful of people gorge themselves, while the starving multitudes lack the necessities of life ".
The members of such elite clubs, usually affluent businessmen, serving and retired senior bureaucrats and military officers, important politicians, etc enjoy the best food, drink the most expensive liquor ( often imported ), indulge in gossip, and make merry, totally indifferent and insensitive to the sufferings of the common man in India, whom they regard as riffraff, rabble, and hoi polloi, and to whom they do not admit to membership, as they would not like the latter to be near them when they are having their revelry, carousal, and jollification.
(Justice Katju is a retired Judge of the Supreme Court of India and a former Chairman of the Press Council of India. These are his personal views.)
