Lamakaan
Cultural center in Banjara Hills, Hyderabad, India
title: "Lamakaan" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["cultural-organisations-based-in-india", "culture-of-hyderabad,-india"] description: "Cultural center in Banjara Hills, Hyderabad, India" topic_path: "geography/india" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamakaan" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0
::summary Cultural center in Banjara Hills, Hyderabad, India ::
::data[format=table title="Infobox organization"]
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| name | Lamakaan () |
| image | Lamakaan, Banjara Hills Hyderabad, Telangana JEG5441.jpg |
| type | Cultural center |
| founded_date | March 2010 |
| location | Road No. 1 Banjara Hills, Hyderabad, India |
| area_served | Hyderabad |
| homepage | http://www.lamakaan.com/ |
| :: |
| name = Lamakaan () | image = Lamakaan, Banjara Hills Hyderabad, Telangana JEG5441.jpg | type = Cultural center | founded_date = March 2010 | founder = | location = Road No. 1 Banjara Hills, Hyderabad, India | origins = | key_people = | area_served = Hyderabad | focus = | method = | revenue = | endowment = | num_volunteers = | num_employees = | num_members = | owner = | homepage = http://www.lamakaan.com/ | dissolved = | footnotes = Lamakaan () is an open cultural center in Banjara Hills, Hyderabad, India. The non-profit organisation provides space for events such as arts, literature, theater, music, and debates.
History
Lamakaan started hosting events in March 2010. It was founded by Ashhar Farhan, Humera Ahmed, Biju Mathew, and Elahe Hiptoola.
The center
::figure[src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bc/Vithal_Rao_2010.jpg" caption="[[Vithal Rao]] performing at Lamakaan"] ::
Lamakaan hosts Pecha Kucha, concerts of famous artists like Warsi Brothers, Vittal Rao, Ateeq Hussain Khan among others. It conducts book releases, plays and seminars. It hosts events like Wikipedia Meetups. Theatre groups have performed at Lamakaan including Samahaara, Sutradhar, Manch Theatre, Nishumbita, Evam, Shudrka, Taher Ali Baig Productions and others.
Closure threat
On 23 December 2015, a notice was issued to Lamakaan by the GHMC to shut down in three days, citing "creating nuisance to the surrounding residents and general public" as the reason. After notice, Lamakaan gave a reply to the civic body that was 'not satisfactory', to which the civic body responded by issuing a closure notice on 23 December. P. Mahender, the GHMC Deputy Commissioner (Circle 10), when contacted, said that there were traffic problems every Sunday in the lane but did not mention anything about the nuisance. One certain complaint was regarding women smoking on the premises.
The notice was withdrawn soon. Due to an uproar in the number of people protesting against shutting down Lamakaan and the signing of around 3,000 people on the online petitioning site change.org demanding the withdrawal of the notice, the attention of then-IT Minister K. T. Rama Rao was drawn. The issue was resolved after P. Mahender spoke with the owner of the place. The notice did not specify what was the cause of the nuisance but instead talked about the place running without a license. It was decided that the parking space of Jalagam Vengalarao Park would be used for four-wheeler parking.
References
References
- (2010-05-25). "Space that inspires". The Hindu.
- (2010-09-07). "Where myth meets reality - Hyderabad". The Hindu.
- "A home for progressive art: How 'Lamakaan' became one of Hyderabad’s iconic cultural spaces".
- jha, neha. (2014-06-30). "Director Taher Ali is a hit man".
- Hyderabad. "Lamakaan, Banjara Hills, Hyderabad | NGOs in Banjara Hills, Hyderabad". Buzzintown.
- (2015-12-29). "Lamakaan faces closure threat". The Hindu.
- (1 January 2016). "Lamakaan Closure Notice Withdrawn". The New Indian Express.
::callout[type=info title="Wikipedia Source"] This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page. ::