Can Architectural Island Become Heritage City?

Even after more than six decades of its existence, Chandigarh remains an architectural entity, rather than a city with social moorings, or a cultural or knowledge hub.

Chandigarh represents a political dilemma to the planners. To create something that is modern, but non-western, that would be a post-colonial and deconstructive dilemma, also, how to claim Chandigarh as a mark of Indian history, when all its elements reflect the western aesthetics and other norms (number 13 was inauspicious, hence, it was missing in the sectoral plans). Therefore, the cities without history can ensure comfort for the few privileged, but do not contribute to the enrichment of the collective spirit to sustain the heritage.

Urban planning is not just an artifact. Historically,  Chandigarh has been administered with restricted social interactions, demarcated human self-expression and developed particular interests giving rise to sharp contradictions. The spaces so meticulously planned without much scope for creative interventions and largely guided by the regulated land use to multiply the comfort of the privileged few.

Heritage is a collective, collaborative and interactive enterprise. The early birds of Chandigarh are propogating just the opposite – advocating heritage as an exclusive preserve of propertied classes. Unfortunately, the Apex Court of the country stamped this brute inequality and discrimination. In a way the latest decision of the Court has further paved the way for the privileged few to withdraw from the community. Galbraith's description of cities as places of “private affluence and public squalor”, holds good even for Chandigarh.

Does heritage belong only to the propertied classes? One can document some of the key initiatives taken by these custodians of heritage. If the bus stand in Sector 17 produced pollution, it was purged by shifting the same to the southern sectors. If the common citizens started using the lake for chhat puja, an artificial lake was constructed for this purpose in a Southern Sector to experience the stink. If the lower courts created congestion in Sector 17, these were shifted to Sector 43. And the waste produced was transferred to the periphery of Chandigarh to a mountain. You outsource pollution, noise, congestion, and stink to the periphery for the noble cause of maintaining Corbusian Heritage for the comfort of the few propertied early birds of Chandigarh. The people who came to Chandigarh in the fifties, they were not wise enough to understand that you inherit heritage by owning property in the first phase of Corbusian architectural creation. They remained under the illusion that it was the dedication to nation building which nurtures heritage, rather than property accumulation. The Apex Court of India has given the ruling that those who own property have the first right to the comforts of heritage.

The Supreme Court’s ruling has prohibited fragmentation/ division/ bifurcation/ apartmentalisation of the residential units in Phase-I (Sectors 1 to 30) of Chandigarh. This is ostensibly to preserve the heritage status of the Corbusian Chandigarh.

Does Chandigarh represent Sectors 1 to 30 only? Do these sectors alone qualify as the Corbusian heritage? Well, in a way, yes!

To maintain the heritage status, the cost is being paid by the people living in other sectors. They are a part of Chandigarh City, but are meant to carry the burden of the people living, to be precise, in Sectors 1 to 11, and the inclusion of Sectors 15 to 30, which are downtown congested neighbourhoods. In fact, the privileges availed by the residents of Sectors 1 to 11 are meant to be camouflaged.

             Read Supreme Court Judgment

To preserve Chandigarh's heritage, Supreme Court bars floor-wise division of houses

The regulated land use and maintenance of exclusive preserves of the elite in the foothills of the Shivaliks (density 6 person per acre), well demarcated from the southern sectors (112 persons per acre) inhabited by the service class, with a periphery infested by the margins, have become a symbol of inequality and injustice. This has been perpetuated in the name of maintaining the original plan as conceived by its architects. As if the cities are not social constructs, just architectural entities!

There is an imperative need to rethink on the governance model and to make conscious efforts to cope with both ‘innovation and decay’. Chandigarh could not transcend the Le Corbusier architectural genius to become a ‘city’ as a social construct or a civilization. It is time that the common citizens should fight against this inequality and marginalization. It is also seems an urgent imperative for the concerned citizens to file a revision petition in the Apex Court to reverse the retrograde ‘decision’!.

To make Chandigarh, a city representing the society’s cultural consciousness, people friendly spaces may have to created, protected and sustained. For example, in the capitol complex, a People’s Knowledge Centre for sharing of knowledge, a world class digital library having traditional folk music, classical and video resource materials, Museum to preserve people’s centric growth in modern cities, and to encourage dialogical tradition structure like Vigyan Bhawan, may have to be set up. The city has to transform itself from cultural wasteland to a cultural nerve centre reflecting the sensitivity of its diverse inhabitants, including even the slum dwellers and the migrants. A conscious uncovering of the cultural impulse, Chandigarh may have to transend architectural entity to a civilisational city.

July 02, 2023