This is part of the Graveyard of Dead Abstracts project.
The ongoing struggle between Muslim and Hindu populations of the British Indian Empire resulted, in 1947, in the passing of the Indian Independence Act by the British House of Commons. This Act partitioned British India into two sovereign states, the Dominion of Pakistan and the Union of India, and effectively marked the end of the British colonial stakes in the Subcontinent. The capital of the Region of Punjab, Lahore, becoming part of Pakistan, India found that they needed to find a new central focus of bureaucracy and power for the area. While they considered simply converting an existing city into the capital, this didn’t seem to fulfil their needs. In 1950, therefore, the Indian authorities began speaking with Le Corbusier about the design of a new planned city, which was to be called Chandigarh. That the newly independent nation looked abroad for assistance in defining their identity speaks volumes. That they chose Le Corbusier for the task says even more.
Given what we know of Le Corbusier’s ‘complex pathology’, as Beatrice Colomina has put it, it is not entirely surprising that he would excitedly launch himself at such a prospect. Chandigarh gave Le Corbusier an opportunity to imprint on foreign soil a large, carefully composed model of the ideal city. This paper reveals how the city of Chandigarh was formed at the nexus of a series of powerful forces, including an emergent national self-image, as well as an abstract image of international Modernism. The paper further discusses the social potential proclaimed by Modernism in relation to the personal agenda of one of its main promoters, investigating how this political agency and Le Corbusier’s personal agency co-existed.
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