Guest Column: Do not murder Le Corbusier’s legacy
As long as Le Corbusier lived, he fought hard to preserve the character of the city, but now the administration is rapidly changing its landscape
After the Partition in 1947, Lahore, the former capital of the British province of Punjab, became a part of Pakistan and Chandigarh was conceived as its replacement. Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, who selected the site, which would become the urban city of Chandigarh in 1948, believed that the city should be a symbol of the nation’s faith in the future.
Charles-Édouard Jeanneret, better known as Le Corbusier, who was the icon of European architectural modernism at the time, was invited to help remake India’s national ideal. Around 28,000 acres were acquired after displacing 58 villages and around 21,000 locals.
Le Corbusier was commissioned to design Chandigarh in November 1950, and in October 1953 Chandigarh was formally opened by the Prime Minister. In April 1964, Le Corbusier made his last and 23rd trip to India.
The Capital of Punjab (Development and Regulation) Act, 1952 and the Building Rules, 1952 were enacted in relation to the development and regulation of the new capital of Punjab. The first major test of these laws came when The Tribune, on April 30, 1960, reported that the defence minister was planning to purchase around 2,000 acres north of Sukhna Lake for around ₹29 lakh for building a military cantonment.
Le Corbusier wrote to Nehru saying that he could not “permit this decision which would ruin the town planning principles of Chandigarh.” On November 4, 1960, The Prime Minister directed the then Punjab chief minister Partap Singh Kairon to not “overrule Corbusier” as “his opinion is of value.”
In Chandigarh’s Le Corbusier: The Struggle For Modernity In Postcolonial India, Vikramaditya Prakash says that a 10 franc bill issued by the Swiss government had Le Corbusier’s portrait on it with superimposed layers of Le Corbusier’s elevation of the Secretariat building at Chandigarh on it.
India’s national pride came to be shared by the Swiss as well
Clearly, as Prakash put it, the Swiss were not commemorating the Indian building, “they were reclaiming what they perceived to be their own legitimate Swiss heritage.” Our national pride was thus shared by the Swiss as well. In the words of Norma Evenson, who authored the book Chandigarh, the basic idiom of Chandigarh was established at the beginning as the architecture of one or two-storey brick houses built in terrace formation. She says that to control the character of development, a system of zoning plans showing building lines, building zones, protected areas, trees and so on were to be a part of the legal conveyance of land as binding on the buyer as the building bylaws.
A covered roof sheltered called a ‘barsati’ was the top floor. The two-storey height of government and private houses that could accommodate a single family was the norm in all the zoning plans made under the 1952 rules. Ravi Kalia Chandigarh -The Making Of An Indian City says that some of the problems listed in the regional plans were fast-depleting underground water resources, soil erosion and flooding along rivers in the vicinity, shortages in housing and office space, poor communications and road links and the deteriorating ecological balance of the region with rapid industrialisation.
Do not change the marvellous landscape: Le Corbusier to Nehru
He writes that these developments started long ago, but as long as Le Corbusier lived, he fought hard to preserve the character of the city that he had planned. Nearly 10 years after starting work on Chandigarh, he wrote to Pandit Nehru, saying “the construction of the Capitol and its lateral elements has brought to Chandigarh such a marvellous landscape, which no city in the world possesses. Let us not destroy it.”
Today, the landscape of the city is being rapidly changed by the UT administration. It is encouraging builders and property brokers to build apartments and flats. The old residential houses are being demolished and reconstructed as apartments that will be sold for exorbitant prices to those who can afford them. The increased number of family units in one dwelling house will multiply by at least three. All amenities and public facilities will remain the same. The biggest victims will be drainage and sewerage. Water and electricity are already scarce. The depleting water table will sink further. The legacy of Le Corbusier will be dishonoured and the city will be ruined.
Who will build another Chandigarh? If we cannot commemorate the memory of Le Corbusier by keeping this unique city intact, let us at least not allow builders and brokers to plunder it. The legacy was not meant to be murdered. The most befitting conclusion can be found in the writings of Norma Evenson: “In the final analysis, a city is not the creation of its planners: it is the creation of its keeping through time. A city planner is not God and cannot bring life into existence, and however much he might have wished it, Le Corbusier could not turn a provincial Indian capital into another Paris. The cities we love were not planned for this, but have come to be loved through the workings of time, circumstance and perhaps just the right combination of luck and human destiny. At present, Chandigarh, represents a generous investment of courage and hope, of talent and devoted effort, and it will continue to require such investments. If Chandigarh is ever to become a true city, however, it will be only when its people have given it a history, when it has become free of its planners to acquire a destiny of its own. Ultimately, the people of Chandigarh must achieve the city they deserve.”
Both Le Corbusier and Pandit Nehru are no more. The legacy of the city and its proud place in Indian history lives on. If we have to live in it, it has to be as it was conceived. Let us not watch its slow erosion and destruction by builders and brokers who will reduce it to buildings of glass, steel, bricks and stone.
anilmalhotra1960@gmail.com
(The writer is a Chandigarh-based lawyer and author. Views expressed are personal)