Spotlight on Chandigarh’s Indian modernists

Chandigarh, independent India’s first experiment in modernism to reflect a new “unfettered” India, is synonymous with Le Corbusier. But the idea of Chandigarh owes itself to the birth of a new India, taking shape long before the European planners and architects came on board, and continuing well after they left. The hands that imagined, shaped and built the city were Indian. It is these Indian architects, engineers, planners and administrators that “Chandigarh’s Indian Modernists’, on view at the Government Museum and Art Gallery, sets out to spotlight.

Curated by architect and design professional Deepika Gandhi, artist and designer Eashan Chaufla, architect and Professor of Architecture at University of Washington Vikramaditya Prakash, and architectural historian Maristella Casciato, the month-long exhibition opened here today. Through drawings, photographs, objects and writings, it pieces together a picture of a modernist vision and a distinctly Indian modernism with lasting global impact. Through material never shown before, the curators are, as Vikramaditya Prakash says, “trying to present an argument and an understanding of Chandigarh, which is not your standard narrative of the architecture and design of the city”. Prakash is the son of Aditya Prakash, who was among these early Indian modernists and started out as a junior architect on the Chandigarh Capitol Project in the 1950s. He was working along with MS Randhawa, Jeet Malhotra, BP Mathur, Eulie Chowdhary, MN Sharma, JK Chowdhry, PN Thapar, PL Varma, AL Fletcher, AR Prabhawalkar… the list is illustrious and inexhaustive.

The purpose of the show, Prakash notes, is not to deny credit to Western architects, but “to remind that a vast majority of the city and the continued responsibility of building it belongs to the Indian modernists”.

The show opens with a blow-up of SB Durga’s iconic image of the Indian architects and planners, with Chief Commissioner MS Randhawa at the centre. There are small biographies of some of the major modernists; the timeline of the making of Chandigarh extends along a modernists in candid moods — Eulie painting a canvas, MN Sharma at the Royal Institute of British Architects. The buildings dotting the landscape of the city evoke awe and inspiration. If there are black-and-white images of the more famous buildings like the now-razed KC Theatre, interesting too are the ones that hide in plain sight — the PEC squash court, the model of the crematorium at Sector 25, the curvilinear roof at the Chandigarh College of Architecture.

The fame of the modernists spread far and wide. There are images of Aditya Prakash’s J&K Theatre in Jammu and SD Sharma’s Vikram Sarabhai Hall in Ahmedabad. Did you know the famous floating restaurant at Sirhind was designed by Jeet Malhotra? You know now.

At the entrance wall, a 1966 film, ‘Une ville à Chandigarh’ (‘A City at Chandigarh’) by Alain Tanner, plays — the jubilation of creating a new city apparent in the nameless labourers who carried out the project with their bare hands. In the playing of the film, the show acknowledges them too.

While it would have been interesting to know the sources of the objects, images, and designs on display at the exhibition, it surely starts a much-needed conversation about who built Chandigarh and what needs to be done to meet the challenges of the ever-expanding city.