United Services Club building , Shimla - a heritage colonial structure where the club served only the British elite

United Services Club - Jakkio Hill Simla - 1867 .flickr.com

The United Services Club, Jakko Hill, Shimla, a recreational joint of Shimla was founded in 1844 during the colonial rule under the East India company and the purpose was to socialize and have fun on the week ends after days of hard work during weekdays in a tropical land.

The summer resort of Shimla was discovered by the British and having found the climate quite suitable, they started a sanatorium here for the sick British army men who felt comfortable to convalesce on the cool hill far away from the husty hot plains.

The United Services Club, restricted its membership to "Commissioned military officers, army or navy chaplains, members of the Indian Civil Service and judges." Neither nor women were allowed to join the club that was meant for English men holding exalted position in the English company. What is surprising is the Services Club had its door tightly shut and the membership was denied even to to the British mercantile classes irrespective of their size of wealth. The club was openly practising class discriminations between the nobility and ordinary people.

Bernard Shaw on a trip to Bombay, India in 1933. saw a Club exclusively reserved for the whites and remarked angrily, "It was nothing short of snobbery to have a club exclusively reserved for the use of the white people in a land of colored people". .

From the Viceroy down to the lowest private in a county regiment, British India being a society run on a strict social hierarchy and class distinction. Viceroy and higher ups like ICS qualified Civil servants never freely mixed with others. The lowest private in a county regiment won't be treated on par with officers holding power.So the military men kept their own company and traders were kept at a safe distance by all.

The British officers linked to British nobility ran the club in tune with British snobbery and class distinctions as the British society was and is stratified. Still there is a big lacuna between the labor classes and the so called aristocrats or nobility which is made of the peerage and the (landed) gentry. The successful common British were regarded in derogatory Anglo-Indian parlance as 'box-wallahs' or mere tradesmen or shopkeepers, irrespective of their personal wealth.

Irish satirist bernard Shaw remarked, "Oh, a club is nothing. The best club in England is the one every sensible man keeps away from.'

With the development of Shimla the USC quickly became a hub for the officers holding key posts to interact among their own kind.

When India was about to get freedom toward the end of 1946 the British population had begun to shrunk on the hill; so was the cream of the society - the British military and ICS staff leaving Shimla and by December 1946 the USC's membership numbers fell and it faced total closure in 1947.

The building is now owned by the Himachal Pradesh state government and offices for the PWD of Himachal Pradesh are functioning there. The old club was reopened in 2011 as the Shimla Heritage Museum in order to showcase the evolution of Shimla since 1800s and its British legacy. The city houses many colonial structures and many of them are declared as the heritage sites and the museum carries the photos of them and presents how Shimla was developed by colonial rulers from the EIC to the British Raj. Shimla was the summer capital of the Raj.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/23268776@N03/4274288826

https://www.navrangindia.in/2015/04/bernard-shaws-indian-visit-1933-and-his.html