Just Like That | Chandigarh: Embracing Indian identity beyond Le Corbusier’s vision
Over time, the city has adopted an Indian personality, flourishing with vibrant markets and cultural charm, despite the legacy left behind by the architect.
This is likely to be a provocative column, but not a toxic one. You may agree or disagree, but that is the nature of who we are, the ‘argumentative Indian’. With this being said, let me state my proposition forthrightly: I like Chandigarh as it has become now, but I do not like Corbusier, its architect. Charles-Édouard Jeanneret, the Swiss-French architect, more famously known as Le Corbusier, was chosen by Prime Minister (PM) Jawaharlal Nehru to design the new city of Chandigarh. However, there were very few reasons to recommend him for the complex project of building an Indian city, except that he was white, western and perceived to be ultra-modern. The interesting thing, of course, was that his modernity was not acceptable to his own countrymen, and none of his futuristic projects were ever implemented in France or anywhere else in Europe.
Only once in Marseilles in 1915, had he been allowed to have his way when, according to critics, he succeeded in mutilating the happy Mediterranean ambience of this coastal town, with its bars and cobbled lanes, street restaurants and quaint houses, by planting a massive concrete tower of twenty storeys. Ten years later, Corbusier proposed to build a new Paris, with skyscrapers, speedways and symmetrical parks, which would have destroyed more of historic France than the German bombs in the two World Wars put together. Not surprisingly, his plan — known as the Voisin Plan — was rejected by the city authorities. By the 1950s, when he was approached to design Chandigarh, he was an architect past his prime, with no takers for his grandiose plans, a man with vision no doubt, but somewhat disillusioned, and with almost no work of any consequence to occupy him.
But destiny was about to take a turn for the Frenchman. Far away in India, a country about which he knew almost nothing, a person no less than the PM had chosen him to create a new city symbolic of the ‘modernity’ he wanted India to adopt. Corbusier was the chosen midwife to break, what Nehru called ‘the shackles of the past’, and received a hero’s welcome in India. All the terms he asked for, including his French cousin and two British architects to be part of his team, were agreed to, and paid for in much-scarce foreign currency. No one advised him that he should acquaint himself with aspects of Indian architecture, especially in Punjab, and, with a complete carte blanche to do what he wanted, he claimed with characteristic hubris that he had drawn up the plan for the new city in 48 hours!
The net result was that Corbusier’s Chandigarh was an extra-terrestrial transplant in direct opposition to the notion of aesthetics, ornamentation and ethos of an Indian city. The city is planned, no doubt, but its antiseptic geometric austerity, without the intimacies and unpredictability of the traditional Indian city, gives it a feel of a ‘scientific’ project implemented at the cost of local sensibilities. The Capitol Complex, which Corbusier personally designed, where the organs of state, the Legislative Assembly, the Secretariat and the High Court are located, is conspicuous for the uninspiring linear use of tons of unfinished concrete, without any features of Indian ornamentation and embellishment, and all of them have deteriorated over successive Indian monsoons into drab, grey rain-streaked concrete boxes.
In the words of the noted architect Gautam Bhatia, “a great Cartesian grid of wide roads was arbitrarily dropped from the sky”. The Chandi temple, after which the city is named, was completely ignored, but beyond that, there is not an arch, or minaret, or courtyard, or chhatri, or dome or doorway that even attempts to be Indian in provenance. In Corbusier’s vision, the residents were condemned to live in anonymous sectors, the roads and boulevards recalled no bygone or living heroes, the gardens took no inspiration from the patterns of the past, and no sculptures or murals invoking Punjab’s history were considered necessary. Even the ‘designated’ shopping areas, normally such a colourful feature of any Indian city, were designed in a non-descript minimalistic and almost pedestrian manner — a row of shops in forgettable brick, known only by the ‘sector’.
In the context of his own country’s architectural evolution, Corbusier’s dry futurism may have been ahead of its times but had value. The critique of his design for Chandigarh is not so much about his oeuvre per se, as it is about its relevance to India. When built it was more an expression of the post-colonial deference of India to the West, not as a statement of her rediscovery of herself.
If today, I like Chandigarh, it is because it has acquired an Indian personality in spite of Corbusier. Its broad roads are lined by flowering and green Indian trees, its sectors have acquired traits of their own, its drab markets are festooned in our traditionally exuberant manner, its dhabas and restaurants have got recognition rooted in the soil, and its relatively lower density of population, within the framework of a planned city, makes it both a more livable city and an appealing one.
But I am not a member of the Corbusier fan club, because, ultimately, he, and his backers at home, did not care about what needs to be borrowed and what should be preserved in the making of a new India.
Reader’s reactions are welcome!
Pavan K Varma is author, diplomat, and former Member of Parliament (Rajya Sabha). Just Like That is a weekly column where Varma shares nuggets from the world of history, culture, literature, and personal reminiscences. The views expressed are personal
Continue reading with HT Premium Subscription
