Talk:Chandigarh

The only planned city

I can't make sense of the following sentence, so I pulled it onto the talk page:

"Chandigarh was the only planned city until 1983, like Gandhinagar, the capital of Gujarat, until 1972."

Is Chandigarh the only "planned city" in the world, or in India? Neither is quite true--Washington DC, Canberra, Brasilia, and others exist around the world, and Jaipur and New Delhi in India. It also implies that Chandigarh stopped being a planned city in 1985, and Gandhinagar in 1972. Tom Radulovich 16:36, 17 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I disagree - Jaipur is anything but planned unless you decide that planning that took place a few hundred years ago and does not hold relevance in todays environment and growth. Of course like anything else this is open to discussion and intepretation.

I would put it this way : Chandigarh is a well-planned city india and is known for its Planning and Architecture. Worth including here that Chandigarh (for its architeture) is specially covered by most of the universities round the globe in their programes (Bachelors in Architecture and beyond) for enriching their students with living examples. --spsood 08:13, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

"Chandigarh was constructed after thorough plans by the French ardhitect Le Corbusier." [1]. I don't know how reliable this information is. Mattisse(talk) 15:23, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

Oh, it's very reliable, albeit slightly more intricate. See James C. Scott's Seeing Like A State pages 130-2. This is a heavily critical view of the city, which is surprising because our article is largely positive. (154.5.166.187 20:38, 2 March 2007 (UTC))

There are Gandhinagar and Bhubaneshwar, that are planned and modern Indian cities, so Chandigarh is not the only planned city even in India.Haphar 07:48, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

City pictures

Could someone please place some pictures of the city here. Maybe an arial view and some buildings by le Corbusier?

Sikh population

With all due respect to the person who wrote this article, there is one glaring mistake: there is no way that the Sikh percentage of the city is only 16%. The city itself was to be given to Punjab in 1986, and judged on the way many Hindu Punjabis opted to denote Hindi as their mother tongue, the Sikh percentage of the city is surely in excess of 60%, correlating the population demographics fof Punjab.

The 1991 Census [2] reports that 20.3% of the population is Sikh. Sukh | ਸੁਖ | Talk 00:24, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

Scrub my last comment, the 2001 census agrees with the figures that were in the article. [3] Sukh | ਸੁਖ | Talk 00:31, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

Hindu punjabis(in Punjab, Haryana, Delhi etc.) have recorded their mother tongue as Hindi since the census of 1961 with the active abetment of Arya samaj and Jan sangh(predecessor of the B.J.P). Punjabi Hindu leadership in Lahore,the political and cultural nerve centre of Punjab, in pre-partiton days had started moving away from Punjabi as it was written in Gurmukhi, even though gurbani and gurmukhi were essential part of punjabi and sindhi hindu culture until the 19th century(Guru Nanak was born in a Hindu khatri family the same caste as most of Punjabi Hindus). In the early 1900's with the arya samaj gaining ground in Punjab there was a delibrate move away from this mainly at the behest of leadership from the Hindi heartland i.e U.P. Which had its own vision of Hindi, Hindu, Hindustan(Although Bengalis, Marathis and gujaratis etc. stuck to their languages) as opposed to the muslim vision of a muslim homeland and Urdu which also started in U.P with the Muslim League and was the main reason for Punjabi Muslims prefering Urdu over Punjabi. There was a virtual competition between Urdu and Hindi for the national language status, Urdu was being widely used under the British in the north so Arya samaj had this policy of only supporting and propagating Hindi and devnagri. The Sikhs in contrast did not have any such influence as they were only concentrated in Punjab. After Partition all other states were being re-organized on linguistic lines in the 50's and 60's starting with Andhra Pradesh. At that time Punjab included Haryana and much of Himachal. The demand for a Punjabi Suba(province) gained momentum mainly supported by the Akali Dal. But hindus had completely abandoned Punjabi by this time and even letters and invitations etc. to family members were and still are written in Hindi, eventhough their mother tongue is Punjabi( not talking to kids in Punjabi is another trend that started during this period). Punjabi suba was bitterly opposed by Punjabi Hindus on the ground that Punjabi in Gurmukhi script was the language of Gurbani hence associated with sikhism, Whereas in reality sikh gurus had only revived the older Landay script(used by the mercantile community of punjab for writing their bahi khata(business dealings and accounts) as the common script of Punjabi because Punjabi at that time was written in Shahmukhi, and Landay had fallen into disuse. The most interesting twist to this is that Landay is the Takri script that originated from Shardapeeth in Kashmir's Kishenganga (Neelam)valley(this place is located in the Pahari(a punjabi variant) speaking region of Kashmir, sharda script of Kashmiri language also originated here, this palce was great centre of learning up until the advent of Islam in the Sub-continent). This place still exists on the LOC on the Pakistani side and Sharda and Narda Peaks and the temple complex(which by the way is now inside the Pak army barracks) are visible from the Indian side. This script though fell from popular use because of the large scale conversions to Islam in Punjab plains and preference for persian in the officialdom, yet it was still widely used not only by the hindu mercantile communities of punjab as stated above but also by the Pahari painters and sculpturs in the hills all across the Jammu region and hill districts of Punjab(Himachal)where Islam was not predominant. Most Pahari paintings from Kangra etc. and even sculptures from the 11th century, in the Chamba museum have carvings in this script. Sikh gurus being from the Hindu mercantile community were naturally inclined to use this over shahmukhi which was based on persian and not very well suited for punjabi especially for typical punjabi words with sounds like DHADA and JHAJHA etc. devnagri has the same problem, when it comes to writing punjabi in devnagri, that is why Paharis and Dogras etc. prefered this script over devnagri in their art. In Jammu takri was replaced by devnagri in 1940's under the influence of Arya samaj etc. there is a movement in Jammu currently to replace devnagri with takri for writing Dogri, we may see this happen soon in Jammu. Takri was discontinued in Himachal only after Independence in 1947. Gurmukhi in addition to having all the letters from Takri/Landay has also added some letters from Devnagri that is the only difference. If someone knows how to read Gurmukhi they can also read Takri/Landay easily.

As a bid to stop the Punjabi suba hindus started recording their mother tongue as Hindi from 1961 census because by doing so in erstwhile east punjab which was hindu majority the most common language overall, at least in census records, would show as hindi, as southern districts of haryana are hindi speaking. The congress was the main political party that the Hindus identified with and that was the party in power in Punjab and Delhi, so Nehru and central government opposed it too. Finally after the patriotism shown by the people of the predominantly sikh majority border districts during the 1965 war with Pakistan the congress relented and agreed to form a Punjab state based on linguistic boundaries where Punjabi would be the state language(the last of such states to be formed based on language). Arya Samaj/Congress leaders from Punjab were still opposed to it. Gulzari lal Nanda of Punjab who was a major Congress personality in the central government of Indira Gandhi once said that he would give akalis such a Punjabi Suba that they will always complain and he delivered on that promise by keeping a number of punjabi speaking districts out of Punjab, maily the northern districts of Haryana in such a way that both Haryana and Punjab bordered Chandigarh, which in turn was made a Union Territory. Chandigarh has a Hindu majority but it is a predominantly Punjabi speaking city, but in the census Hindi shows up as the most common language mainly because of Punjabi hindus recording their mother tongue as hindi. By that logic Ludhiana, Jalandhar and Amritsar all hindu majority cities would also not be a part of Punjab, because hindus there also record their mother tongue as Hindi. This was one of the root causes that led to a series of events that ultimately culminated in the militancy in Punjab. The other being the issue of river waters. Now as for the Sikh population in Chandigarh, it was going up till the nineties but that changed with the large scale migration from UP and Bihar(now 12%) into Chandigarh actively aided and abetted by the politicians and U.T. admninstration it serves the dual purpose of vote bank(immediate) and ethnic domination(long term). So although the actual number of sikhs increased their percentage in the population decreased because of the migrants from other states moving in, in greater numbers. It has accelerated in Punjab also. During the NDA(Akali-BJP in Punjab)tenure as a result the Sikh population in Punjab stands at 59%(2001 census) down from a high of 64% just a decade ago. As recently as last year the Union government and Chandigarh U.T. administration regularised illegal labour colonies with a population of 100,000(total urban population of Chandigarh is 900,000) and is constructing flats for them going against the master plan of Chandigarh. There was an agitaion against it by the people who were displaced from villages that were on the land where Chandigarh now stands as these people were never adequately compensated. One of them was quoted by the Tribune as saying "the govenment is building flats for people who have moved here from other states and are illegally occupying government land while those that this land belonged to have not even been compensated." There is a great danger of an Assam type agitation starting in Punjab and Chandigarh if interstate migration is not tackled. Militancy is still fresh in people's minds, it would be foolish on the part of Punjabis both Hindus and non-hindus as well as the government to let things continue as they are.

In 1985 the Punjab Accord between Longowal and Rajiv Gandhi promised the transfer of Chandigarh to Punjab in lieu of transfering 75000 acres of land to Haryana from Punjab, While ignoring the fact that Haryana has at least seven districts(parts of some) where Punjabi is the predominant language, but most of them are recorded as hindi speaking because Punjabi hindus that have a large population in these districts record their mother tongue as hindi. For example because of this all of Ambala district went to Haryana including Kharar tehsil which was part of Ambala, but Kharar was given to punjab at the insistence of Indira Gandhi as otherwise Punjab would have no border with the capital Chandigarh. In other states each town and village were considered as stand alone while demarcating boundaries of states while in Punjab's case it was based on districts. A lot of Haryanvi/Jaat areas are still in Western U.P and Rajasthan. Ganganagar district of Rajasthan along with parts of Hanumangarh are predominantly Punjabi speaking. Bilaspuri/kahluri and Bagri are recorded as Punjabi dialects in the Indian census while the areas they are spoken in are parts of Himachal and Haryana. There needs to be a serious re-organization of states in the north. 29 September, 2006 (UTC)

Dear RMehra

I think that the recording of Hindi by Punjabi Hindus as their mother tongue has been a most sad happening and will haunt the Punjabi Hindu community in the future with disastrous consequences .As a Punjabi Hindu from an AryaSamaji background I wish that this trend were completely reversed . What ever the reasons may have been persisting with this self destructive behaviour now is foolhardy . The Arya Samaj needs to do some serious rethinking and a U turn on this issue should be the mission of the Arya Samajist machinery now . Regards Vikram Anand

Education

Moved education related information to a new section in keeping with Wikipedia:WikiProject Indian cities. RMehra 05:57, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

I have twice now removed blatant advertising for some unknown schools and it keeps getting put back on by someone using the name Robzz. This user should be prevented from changing this page. --Rameses 03:53, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

Ditto for the colleges and univs. Someone's putting the rankings of those places - quite irrelevant here.Buntygill 09:53, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

I think it 'd be a good idea to put the educational institutions into a table. The way they are written now, they are hardly legible. Buntygill 09:59, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

Transfer of Chandigarh to Punjab

Moved information related to transfer of Chandigarh to Punjab into the history section. RMehra 06:44, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

Geography

Added a new section on Geography. Need to beef it up. RMehra 08:48, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

Demographics

Expanded the section on demographics and moved the section on languages to the demographics section on the lines of most good articles on Indian cities e.g. Mumbai. RMehra 11:01, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

Railway Station

Just added information on the Chandigarh railway station in the transport section. Will add information on the air links in the next edit. RMehra 06:16, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

Added information on airport. RMehra 13:46, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

Economy

Added some information to the economy section. RMehra 11:47, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

External Links

71.113.21.70 (talk · contribs) changed the external links of the article & added a new link. All these links don't work giving the "403 Forbidden" error. So I reverted it. Then Michaldemin (talk · contribs), who I strongly suspect is 71.113.21.70, reverted back to the version by 71.113.21.70. Now can someone else check these links & confirm that they don't work & it's not a just a problem with my browser? Thanks --Srikeit ^{(Talk | Email)} 08:08, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

A similar thing has been done to the Panchkula article. --Srikeit ^{(Talk | Email)} 08:17, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

This is what all the websites show....

Screen Snapshot

Thanks! RMehra 11:19, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

Punjab and Haryana Assembly

I have to say, this looks like one of the ugliest buildings I have ever seen in my entire life. :) Sukh | ਸੁਖ | Talk 11:44, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

Look at the architecture, not the maintenance. I 'm sure you meant the scum in the tank and the black layer on the building material. Buntygill 07:40, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

Wouldn't it be a good idea to make these pictures a bit smaller? Some of these are really big for the article. You have the full resolution pictures on wikimedia anyway? RMehra 18:24, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

GMCH

I started GMCH Chandigarh. Their website gmch.nic.in sucks bigtime. I collected single-sentence info from newspapers, but a lot is needed. Please add if you can. Bunty.Gill 15:44, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Chandigarh under the federal Government of India?

India is a Central Government. Most power lies with the Central Government of India, unlike United States which has a Federal Government where more power is with the individual states. Therefore a correction must be made that "Chandigarh is adminstered by the Central Government of India."

Petrol pumps in Chandigarh

Of several Chandgigarh region Petrol pumps that I have visited over the years, I have found that now a days my car gives more milage if I get it filled from 'Pathania Petrol pump' in Sec-34C vis a vis BP-21 the most famous one. I am posting this for consumers benefit and have no other vested interest, may be people watching this page can try themselves to verify it. I always thought that websites such as this (allowing editing by all) can be put to good use for such pruposes as well.

What bullshit! Wikipedia IS NOT EQUAL to a consumer reviews website!! Bunty.Gill 09:42, 23 March 2007 (UTC)