The place is nondescript; if you don’t look for it, you may not find it. And yet, for over 70 years, many Indians in London have sought it out, looking for familiar flavours and faces – a taste of home abroad.
The India Club – an iconic lounge-cum-restaurant and bar – that sits inside the Hotel Strand Continental on a busy stretch of road in central London, has been a historically and culturally significant space for the South Asian community in the city for decades.
It was set up in the 1950s as a place for early Indian immigrants to meet and connect, but now the India Club is set to shut down as the owners of the building it is housed in want to demolish a part of the structure to set up a more modernised hotel.
Many patrons say they are saddened by the news as the closure of the Club will lead to the city losing a part of its history.
The Club has been battling against closure for years. A couple of years ago, its owners – Yadgar Marker and his daughter, Phiroza – won their battle against the demolition after their campaign to save the place received thousands of signatures.
But last week, they told the press that 17 September would be the last day the Club would remain open.
The news has come as a blow to many as the place is steeped in history. Located on the first floor of the Hotel Strand Continental, the India Club was started by the members of the India League – a Britain-based organisation that campaigned for India’s independence in the 1900s. India’s first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru is said to have been among the Club’s founding members. The Markers bought the lease to the property in the 1990s.
Reports say that India’s freedom activists initially used the Club as a meeting space, but later it became a place for people from the South Asian community to forge friendships over shared meals and events.
“In the 1950s and 60s, it was the only place Indians could go to meet people who spoke their language and ate their food,” says Kusoom Vadgama, a historian who regularly visited the Club after she moved to the UK in 1953.
(BBC)
