CHANDIGARH - A RARE EPITOME OF MODERNIZATION

Chandigarh is located by the foothills of the Shivalik Range of the Himalayas in northwest India.

- Surbhi Arora

It covers an area of approximately 114 km2. It borders the states of Punjab and Haryana. The city lies in the northern plains and includes a vast area of flat, fertile land. Towards the northeast, it covers parts of Bhabar and the remaining terrain is part of the Terai. Cities surrounding Chandigarh are Mohali, New Chandigarh, Patiala, Zirakpur and Rupnagar in Punjab, and Panchkula and Ambala in Haryana.

The name ‘Chandigarh’ is derived from the ancient temple devoted to the Hindu Goddess Chandi situated near the city in Panchkula. Chandi refers to the Hindu Goddess Chandi and Grah means a fortress. Thus, Chandigarh means the fortress of Goddess Chandi.

The foundation stone of the city was laid down in 1952. Chandigarh was planned and designed in the 1950s and 60s by the French-Swiss master architect Le Corbusier, along with architects Jane Drew, Pierre Jeanneret, and Maxwell Fry, and a number of Indian modernists. The city was the vision of Pandit Jawahar Lal Nehru and it represented a break with India’s colonial past and embodied a distinctly-Indian form of modernism. Its roots were based on the values of democracy, socialism, secularism, and non-alignment.

In 1952, when Pandit Jawahar Lal Nehru first visited Chandigarh, he had said, ‘Let this be a new town, symbolic of the freedom of India, unfettered by the traditions of the past, an expression of the nation’s faith in the future”.