A View from Indian History Swati Chattopadhyay Department of Architecture University of California at Berkeley Until recently architectural historians have been reluctant to examine issues of politics, race and gender in the production of the built environment. New approaches to architectural history induced by studies in vernacular architecture, cultural geography and social history have created fresh insights into the history of the built environment.
Colonial history offers multiple advantages for such an examination.
Inherent in the production of colonial history are indelible prints of a power struggle that linked the world together and formed the intellectual and social consciousness of the emerging disciplines of the nineteenth century. These power struggles are often more tangled and muted within metropolitan culture, whereas the amplified power differentials in colonial discourse permit a clearer reading of interpretive strategies and illuminate the need to control architectural discussions within prefigured boundaries. Colonial historiography also provides the most obvious position to understand the links between modernism and colonialism, an issue that has received limited attention, despite the profound influences of colonialism in shaping ideas about modernism and modernization. One of the important monuments of twentieth century modernism, Le Corbusier's 1951 plan of Chandigarh, the capital of the province of Punjab in India, has received its share of criticism for lacking a viable urban scale. The plan was based on a 1200 m. x 800 m. grid, with the major buildings designed as objects in the vast plain of Punjab.