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by Carl Lindquist |
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It is said: "India is a land of contrasts." |
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This statement, often found in travel literature, is one of the Western World's favorite assessments of this country. Indeed, contrasts are found in India: It is a land with a history of invention and discovery that spans millennia, the birthplace of many religions and home to nearly a billion people. To describe India simply as a land of contrasts allows the foreigner to neatly encapsulate an overwhelming variety of indescribable experiences and impressions. |
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However useful this phrase may be, it is a superficial assessment in the sense that it reinforces the illusion of the mysterious East, a place where the inhabitants, their concerns, and their endeavors, are somehow very different from those in the West. India is indeed a land of contrasts, but this statement, insofar as it posits India as a place which is remote and incomprehensible, belies the fact that the concerns and problems of the Indian people are shared throughout our planet. |
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The city in which the Rock Garden is located is itself a study in contrasts. Chandigarh is a modern city, built in the 1950s from a design by the French architect Le Corbusier. Although its arrangement of streets and sectors on a strict grid contrasts with the organic, intertwining streets and alleys found in the older sectors of many Indian cities, Le Corbusier's design has a local historical precedent: Chandigarh was the site of an ancient city which had wide streets intersecting at right-angles, lined with neat, well-constructed buildings. In principle this ancient civic design is not unlike the 20th century plan created by Le Corbusier. The visitor who walks the streets of Chandigarh senses the civic appreciation of beauty and order. Streets here are clean, wide, and clearly demarcated. To the northwest is a world class rose garden. A huge pedestrian mall occupies the center of the downtown area, giving the town a cosmopolitan appeal. |
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No guide book gives a just description of The Rock Garden in Chandigarh. Built of industrial waste and thrown-away items, it is perhaps the world's most poignant and salient statement of the possibility of finding beauty in the unexpected and accidental. It expresses the fragility of the environment, the need for conservation of the earth's natural resources, the importance of balancing industrial development and sound environmental practices. It attests to the ingenuity and imagination of the people of Chandigarh and their awareness of these global concerns. Above all, it is a community's testament of appreciation for art, expressing ideas and problems in a universal language. |
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This monument built by Nek Chand underscores the fact that the East and West are united by common concerns and problems by addressing a dilemma which is all too familiar to Westerners: the opposition between productive industry and a healthy, sustainable environment. The Rock Garden is a monument of international importance which expresses this global problem through beauty, ingenuity, and imagination. |
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Chandigarh and The Rock Garden |
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