'The Idea of India' is perhaps one of the best written books regarding modern India's political history. Sunil Khilnani explores democracy, institution, cities and personalities in this much recommended book.
In his third chapter, titled 'Cities', Khilnani explores different Indian cities and their distinctive personalities. His explanation of Chandigarh is worth reading -
'Partition was the immediate background to the building of Chandigarh. The need for a new capital for the province of Punjab (the old capital, Lahore, had been awarded to Pakistan) presented an opportunity that matched Nehru's intention to have India break away from the existing cities - stamped by colonialism, soiled by Partition, and in the grip of often corrupt municipalities. Nehru was in search of a way to renew the city, to use it to display an Indian modernity distinct from and free of the colonial version. Like his British predecessors, he was attracted by the possibility of starting again, of constructing on an empty field a generous architectural proposition of the new India. The result was a monumental city, condemned to revolve in an external orbit around the life of its people in Punjab: a glorious stage set where tableaux of state might be enacted but lacking everyday politics.
Chandigarh was a city of politicians, bureaucrats and politics. Built after waves of post-Partition migration, it was spared inundation by the poorest and most abject. It became a terminus for the more prosperous: retired civil servants and servicemen, professionals, and a large class of their servitors. But Chandigarh lacked any of the productive capacities of modernity. Le Corbusier, its architect, was insistent that it must be solely a seat of government, not of industry and manufacture: 'one must not mix the two' he stipulated in his eccentric and imperious manual,' For the Establishment of an Immediate Statute of the Land'.'
'Although a provincial capital, Chandigarh from its inception had the status of a national project - Nehru took a personal interest in it, and it was generously funded by the national government. The site was desolate but spectacular: 400 kilometers north of New Delhi, on a plain that sloped slowly, beneath wide blue skies, towards the Himalayan foothills. 'The site chosen,' Nehru explained,' is free from existing encumberances of new towns', which would make the new city 'symbolic of the freedom of India, unfettered by traditions of the past.... an expression of the nation's faith in the future'. But Chandigarh was also, and ultimately most decisively, the fantasy of its architect.'
'The design of Chandigarh expressed one aspect of Nehru's idea of a modern India: the sense that India must free itself of both the contradictory modernity of the Raj and nostalgia for its indigenous past. It had to move forward by one decisive act that broke both with its ancient and its more recent history. The rationalist, modernist strain in Nehru's thinking obliterated the attachment to the heritage of an Indianness rooted in the past. Chandigarh boldly divested itself of history, rejecting both colonial imagery and national sentimentalism of ornament. The literal, utilitarian names of its axial avenues (Madhya Marg, Uttar Marg - Central Avenue, North Avenue) recount no nationalist history (no ubiquitous MG Road here). It has no nationalist monuments, because Le Corbusier specificially banned them.... Just as the English language placed all Indians, at least in principle, at a disadvantage of equal unfamiliarity, so, too Chandigarh could not be seized and possessed by any one group. Even those familiar with colonial architectural idioms, the bungalow and compound, could not immediately usurp this brave new reinforced concrete world.'
'The residential area was divided into thirty neighborhood blocks, or 'sectors', all organized in a repeating pattern. But the egalitarian air was illusory, since the sectors were graded by the strict ranks of administrative hierarchy. The exclusive low-numbered northern sectors, inhabited by bureaucrats and politicians, ranked above the middle class southern sectors; the high-numbered sectors housed the lowest in the hierarchy. Each sector was internally differentiated: houses were identified by plot number, and the lower the number, the larger the plot; those in the thousands were the smallest. Every Chandigarh address thus encoded fairly precise information about its owner's standing in the bureaucratic and economic hierarchy.'
'Chandigarh never achieved the cosmopolitanism it craved. Instead of ruling, enlightening and modernizing its society. this city of the the future became a museum piece in need of protection from its own violently quarreling citizens and the ravages of climate. Its vacant, eerily ordered centre was ignored by the teeming and disorganized expansion of the industrial townships of Panchkula and S.A.S Nagar, whose economic dynamism helped to make it one of India's fastest growing urban regions during the 1960s and 1970s. In that sense, it could claim a certain success. But Chandigarh failed to produce a society of secular individuals or a modernist politics: drawn into the vortex of Punjab's politics, it was turned into a cipher in a battle of communal identities.
'Chandigarh spawned further provincial 'concept' capitals: Otto Koenigsberger's Bhubhaneshwar, Bhopal and Gandhinagar - the one that most aspired to Chandigarh's image, a cruel concrete homage to Gandhi, which displaced Ahmedabad as the new capital of Gujarat.'
In these selected lines (above), Khilnani has succinctly summarized the need for Chandigarh; what the idea behind it was, and he gave his own opinion of what he felt it become. It is true that it failed to inspire similar cities across the country, but it battled the 1980 communal tensions of the Hindus and Sikhs to return to be a secular city, albeit because of a truce between the two religions. A short background of Chandigarh (circa 2009) might be useful at this point -
The first planned city of India, Chandigarh, is spread across 114 square kilometers and holds the distinction of being the city with the highest average per-capita income in the country. It is home to 3 governments, a claim no other Indian city has, with the Chandigarh UT Government being here along with the Punjab and Haryana Governments. According to a 1985 agreement by Rajiv Gandhi with the Akali Dal, Chandigarh was meant to go entirely to Punjab, but after 24 years of the agreement, it does not seem to be coming into effect anytime soon.
In Infrastructure terms on a whole, the city appears to be peerless. A 2007 study by the Asian Development Bank showed that Chandigarh had the best water supply in India, supplying water 12 hours a day compared to the 4.3 hour average of the other 20 studied cities. Also, it has the largest number of vehicles per capita in the nation. A reason cited for this are the wide and well maintained roads, often viewed as an anomaly in India.
Yet the city is trapped in a conflict. Past and the future. A visit to the city will explain it. You'll know it when you see it.
alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5353179785984437122" />The map of Chandigarh. As Khilnani, put it, the lower the sector number, the more prestigious it is. A few points to note: Sector 13 doesnt exist, Le Corbusier was apparently superstitious. Sector 17 is exclusively the commercial centre, with no residences.
A typical roundabout which is found between the sectors. The traffic is higher than what you will typically see though.
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