On a latest wet Friday night in New Delhi, a BJP MP was noticed chatting to a Congress MP about how the newest monsoon session of Parliament was a washout, whereas a former CPI(M) MP passing by them stopped to say hiya. Besides Parliament, there is just one place in New Delhi that encourages such a crossover: Khan Market.
Khan Market isn’t just India’s costliest and upscale procuring district; it’s a market that trades in energy and capital as its items — a logo of the sort of energy brokering that’s now synonymous with statecraft. So when picture guru Dilip Cherian talked in regards to the iconic market and its proximity to energy on Yasmin Kidwai’s RedFM podcast, A Delhi Love, the clip went viral.
Khan Market has come to denote a sure sort of exclusivity and elitism that’s out of attain to the typical Indian, with the time period ‘Khan Market gang’ coming into political parlance after Prime Minister Narendra Modi started utilizing it as a jibe in opposition to India’s liberal elite. But, like Cherian stated, the concept that Delhi has moved on from Khan Market is a delusion: it’s nonetheless very a lot the casual centre of energy in the nation’s capital due to the highly effective guests it attracts.
A view of the Khan Market in New Delhi on Monday
| Photo Credit:
Hunafa KP
“Khan Market, in the last 25 years has emerged as one of the social lungs of Delhi,” says Dilip to The Hindu. “You breathe it in, and you suddenly feel the power, you breathe it out, and you know it matters. It is absolutely integral to Delhi’s functioning.”
And there’s a pretty simple rationalization for why: its location. The market’s tightly coiled format unfurls right into a neat maze in the center of central Delhi — Khan Market is straight away accessible from Parliament, the Ring Road, the town’s diplomatic enclave and its international residents, and the poshest pincode in the town, Amrita Shergill Marg. Over the years, its location has made it a logo of stratification — anybody who visits can see that political ideology won’t be a standard denominator, however wealth is. Members of the BJP are simply as doubtless to be seen at Khan Market as a Congress chief or a Supreme Court lawyer or a newspaper editor.
“Governments have changed, but the politicians keep coming to Khan Market — that won’t change,” says Sanjeev Mehta, president, Khan Market Traders Association. “All of Delhi is essentially part of the Khan Market gang then. There’s something here for everybody.”
The market’s elite repute is offset by its aspirational attraction to common passers-by. Young college students have taken to posing for images outdoors Faqir Chand Booksellers as a social media pattern, whereas vacationers make it some extent to cease by. Here, the very British idea of a excessive avenue yields to Delhi’s chaotic allure: positioned between uneven cobbled streets and a mass of tangled wires overhead are a few of India’s most luxurious manufacturers and connoisseur eating places. It now homes 156 retailers — not counting the neatly organised avenue hawkers promoting garments and magazines in the market’s connecting alleyways — and round 35 eating places throughout a wide range of international cuisines. It used to be one of many few markets in the town that offered imported groceries and provisions, which earned it a loyal buyer base amongst bureaucrats, expats, and diplomats.
A view of the Khan Market in New Delhi on Monday
| Photo Credit:
Hunafa KP
“Khan Market continues to retain its position as Delhi’s prime retail destination due to its strategic central location, affluent catchment, and a carefully curated tenant mix of luxury retail, fine dining, and lifestyle brands,” says Anshuman Magazine, chairman, and CEO of actual property group, CBRE.
Somehow, regardless of its acquired repute for elitism, Khan Market continues to obtain extraordinarily heavy footfall. It is much less about luxurious and extra about enterprise: actual property properties like Khan Market are a “retail hotspot,” says Anshuman, and mirrors the broader transformation of engaging retail areas in India.
This inextricable hyperlink to procuring cuts by the concept that solely a sure sort of individual visits Khan Market. Both Cherian and Delhi historian Narayani Gupta say India is a nation of consumers. But there’s something a couple of market that’s quintessential to the Indian public sphere, as theorised by thinker Jurgen Habermas. Whether it’s consuming tea at a roadside stall and shopping for greens off the road, or consuming kimchi eggs benedict after a designer boutique procuring spree, Khan Market presents itself up as one in every of New Delhi’s fashionable public spheres — and maybe probably the most influential.
Khan Market is one in every of impartial India’s watering holes, the place diplomats, politicians, businessmen, lobbyists, legal professionals, and journalists have at all times met. Only in the previous twenty years has its conversations grow to be framed by sourdough and sauvignon blanc.
A view of the Khan Market in New Delhi
| Photo Credit:
Hunafa KP
But the sheen of its clientele has not stripped the market of extra typical elements: there are the same old avenue hawkers, tea and cigarette stalls, and old-school stationers and toy shops. Dogs (who put on sweaters in the winter) lounge about on its footpaths. A temple in the marketplace’s outer perimeter serves as a useful landmark for patrons calling Ubers. Roadside carts line the market’s exit alley, which culminates in a metro station. Khan Market’s distributors aren’t as starstruck by it as those that frequent it — to them their clients justify its actual property worth. Nor ought to one overlook its auto stand’s unflappable drivers and their baseline disinterest in everybody who alights from large automobiles with glazed home windows or diplomatic quantity plates.
Narayani is equally much less enamoured of the market and its elite ubiquity. “All the shades of snobbery clip-clop along its narrow paths. They do not seem to fret at the lack of external elegance and of green areas — which Connaught Place still has — or the village mela vitality of Dilli Haat,” she stated.
Renting a retailer in Khan Market can price a minimal of ₹12 lakhs a month, and can go up to ₹16 lakhs, stated Sanjeev. Street hawkers don’t pay something: one of many market’s hottest tea sellers has grown up in the realm, and his father works as a guard. A cup of tea right here may cost ₹15, however it’s unattainable to get an identical cup for lower than at the least ₹250 contained in the market’s hallowed halls. Eating a full meal will burn a gap in one’s pocket, which could clarify why the market is so packed between mealtimes — at the least snacks are extra reasonably priced. The solely factor that’s actually low cost is searching.
A view of the Khan Market in New Delhi
| Photo Credit:
Hunafa KP
Khan Market was arrange as a refugee colony by the Ministry of Relief and Rehabilitation in 1951 for these displaced by the Partition in 1947. A handful of authentic residents stay, whereas many of the actual property has been taken over by retailers, eating places, and cafes. Mehta stated that the market turned each well-liked and posh in the Eighties, after international officers and expats started to go to it over Connaught Place. It turned house to a few of India’s first malls, like Empire Stores and Sovereign Dairies, and well-liked ice-cream parlours helped convey in a youthful clientele. It graduated from merely a market to a gathering place when cafe culture reached Delhi in the Nineteen Nineties. And as of 2025, what began as a refugee colony now averages a rental worth between ₹1,600-1,900 per sq ft, in accordance to CBRE.
Yasmin, whose podcast explores numerous elements of the town of New Delhi, sums up the market as a “vibe.” “You can love it, you can hate it, but you can’t ignore it,” she says. She factors to how Khan Market’s bookstores, just like the inimitable Bahrisons Booksellers, turned a focus — including a wholly new layer of social and cultural capital to an in any other case regular excessive avenue. “Book culture and coffee culture foster community,” stated Yasmin . “But honestly, the openness of Khan Market is not just material — it translates in welcoming all kinds of people.”
The English bookstores and its well-known patrons — from writers, college students, and activists to celeb faces — might need contributed to the thought of the market being elite and snobbish. But they’ve additionally served as an mental anchor to the market. They have fostered a way of fierce loyalty and dedication to an erstwhile public house, particularly with the dwindling of bodily mental areas in the day and age of Digital India. Regular guide launches and talks retains the market grounded as its consumerism skyrockets.
“From mantri (minister) to santri (sentry) — all kinds make their purchases here,” stated Sanjeev.
