Why Winston Churchill's unpaid Bangalore Club bill featured in an SC case

On Wednesday, a Supreme Court judgment began with a small anecdote about the 152-year-old Bangalore Club, located in the city’s Richmond Town. The bench, headed by Justice RF Nariman and comprising Justices Navin Sinha and Indira Banerjee, was hearing a case about whether the club was liable to pay wealth tax. 

“In the year of grace 1868, a group of British officers banded together to start the Bangalore Club. In the year of grace 1899, one Lt. W.L.S. Churchill was put up on the Club’s list of defaulters, which numbered 17, for an amount of Rs 13/- being for an unpaid bill of the Club. The “Bill” never became an “Act.” Till date, this amount remains unpaid,” Justice RF Nariman observed in his part of the judgment. 

“Lt. W.L.S. Churchill went on to become Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill, Prime Minister of Great Britain. And the Bangalore Club continues its mundane existence, the only excitement being when the tax collector knocks at the door to extract his pound of flesh,” the court added. 

Bangalore Club had filed an appeal in the Supreme Court against the Karnataka High Court’s decision that the club was entitled to pay wealth tax under Section 21AA (Assessment when assets are held by certain associations of persons) of the Wealth Tax Act, 1957. 

The judge allowed the appeal by Bangalore Club, stating that the club is a social club where the members do not band together for any commercial or business purpose of making income or profits and so the section does not get attracted at all.

“The Bangalore Club is an association of persons and not the creation, by a person who is otherwise assessable, of one among a large number of associations of persons without defining the shares of the members so as to escape tax liability. For all these reasons, it is clear that Section 21AA of the Wealth Tax Act does not get attracted to the facts of the present case,” the court held.

The court added that for the purposes of Income Tax, the Bangalore Club could perhaps be treated to be a ‘body of individuals’ which is a wider expression than ‘association of persons,’ in which such body of individuals may have no common object at all but would include a combination of individuals who had nothing more than a unity of interest. 

The bill Churchill never paid

Formed by a bunch of British officers, the Bangalore United Services Club came into existence formally five years later in 1868. Since its existence, many British officers, who were stationed in Bengaluru or erstwhile Bangalore, became members of the exclusive white club for men. Winston Churchill, former British Prime Minister during World War II, and heavily criticised for his role in the great Bengal famine, came to Bangalore in 1896. 

Twenty-eight years into the club’s existence, Churchill, who was a lieutenant in the 4th Hussars, was stationed in the Bangalore cantonment, when he became a member of the club. 

According to Bangalore Club’s website, Winston Churchill played polo and read a lot of books at the club during his time as a member and also spent a lot of time “courting” an English woman named Pamela Plowden, who later went on to become Lady Lytton. Three years after his stay in Bengaluru (erstwhile Bangalore), Churchill left for war in the then North-West frontier, which is now Pakistan. When he left the city, he also left behind a debt of Rs 13 that he owed to the club, which was subsequently written off as “irrecoverable debt” in 1899. 

Bangalore Club and its history

In the year 1863, when a large part of what was Bangalore was still forested and the “town” was restricted to the British cantonment, there were many clubs in Bengaluru that came to be known as typical British “gentlemen’s clubs.” 

The British of the Victorian era, were known to be sticklers for “propriety”, had “societal rules” about how to dress, how to eat, how to talk and even what was considered “polite conversation.” The gentlemen clubs during the British rule, were for a long time “white only” clubs, where they could “feel at home” by having a space to drink, gamble, play sports like polo, tennis among other things. These clubs were also where the members could freely engage in social gatherings accompanied with all the rules they imposed on themselves. The Bangalore Club too, was one such gentlemen’s club until the year 1946. However, with changing times and Indian independence, the club shed its cloak of British superiority and is now one of the most expensive clubs in the city. 

Bangalore Club completed 150 years of its existence in 2018.