Chandigarh

Chandigarh is a city and union territory in northwestern India. It functions as the joint capital for the states of Punjab and Haryana. The city lies near the foothills of the Shivalik range of the Himalayas, with Haryana to its east and Punjab surrounding it on all other sides. It forms the core of the Chandigarh Capital Region, or Greater Chandigarh, which also includes the satellite cities of Panchkula (in Haryana) and Mohali (in Punjab). Chandigarh is 260 kilometers northwest of New Delhi, 229 kilometers southeast of Amritsar, and 104 kilometers southwest of Shimla.

The city was one of the first planned cities built after India gained independence, and it is famous worldwide for its architecture and urban layout. The master plan was created by Le Corbusier, who built on earlier designs by architects Maciej Nowicki and Albert Mayer. Most government buildings and housing were designed by a team led by Le Corbusier, along with architects Jane Drew and Maxwell Fry. In July 2016, the Capitol Complex—part of a global collection of Le Corbusier’s works—was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Since its initial construction, Chandigarh has expanded significantly and has spurred the growth of Mohali and Panchkula. The tri-city metropolitan area has a combined population of over 1,611,770. The city has one of the highest per capita incomes in the country, and the union territory ranks third among Indian states and territories on the Human Development Index. In 2015, a survey by LG Electronics ranked it the happiest city in India. That same year, a BBC article identified Chandigarh as one of the few master-planned cities worldwide to successfully combine monumental architecture, cultural growth, and modernization.

The name Chandigarh means “fort of Chandi,” combining *Chandi* (the Hindu goddess Chandi, a form of Shakti) and *garh* (meaning stronghold or fortress). The name comes from a village where a temple dedicated to the goddess once stood; that temple still exists at Chandi Mandir, on the city’s outskirts in the Panchkula district of Haryana. The city’s nickname, “The City of Beauty,” comes from the City Beautiful movement, a philosophy popular in North American urban planning in the 1890s and 1900s. Albert Mayer, the initial planner, lamented that Americans had rejected City Beautiful ideas and declared, “We want to create a beautiful city.” The phrase was used as a logo in official publications in the 1970s and remains how the city describes itself.

The city’s creation followed the chaos of India’s independence and partition in 1947. The province of Punjab was split: the eastern, mostly Hindu and Sikh part stayed in India, while the western, mostly Muslim part became part of Pakistan. Lahore, the capital of undivided Punjab, was ceded to Pakistan after fierce contestation. The government of India’s East Punjab state was left without an administrative center. The loss of Lahore, the need to rehabilitate refugees from West Pakistan, and a mass exodus of business communities created urgency. Shimla, the former summer capital of British India and the Punjab province, housed part of the East Punjab government, but it could not fully accommodate the administration, forcing offices to scatter across the state and causing difficulties and costs.

Government of India and East Punjab representatives decided to build a new capital rather than attach capital functions to an existing city, since all existing cities were considered inadequate and swollen by refugees. The new capital needed space for government machinery, refugee resettlement and businesses, and future expansion, as well as rail, road, and air connectivity. It also had to address the psychological loss of partition, stimulate the devastated economy, and serve as a symbolic gesture of unity, stability, and India’s newfound sovereignty. Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru personally endorsed the project, saying it should 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.” The capital was to be located in the most populous part of the state, between the Doaba and Ambala districts, and planned for about 500,000 people. Several existing cities were considered but rejected for various reasons; political lobbying also made selecting an existing city difficult. The lack of consensus on location and the high costs threatened the project. In 1948, three possible sites were settled on—one in Ambala district, one in Ludhiana, and one partly in Ambala and Patiala state (then not part of East Punjab). The first site, in Ambala district’s Kharar tehsil, was chosen after aerial reconnaissance by Parmeshwari Lal Varma and Prem Nath Thapa.