Julia A. B. Hegewald

Building Citizenship: The Agency of Public Buildings and Urban Planning in the Making of the Indian Citizen

Julia A. B. Hegewald explores the significant role played by visual elements in the making of citizenship. By focusing on the two sites of New Delhi and Chandigarh, the chapter examines these issues during two crucial periods of Indian political history: the colonial and the post-independence eras. When planning the new capital city in New Delhi architects and urban planners were conscious of the need to address two distinct audiences: the British public at home and the local Indian population. The second case, Chandigarh, illustrates the challenges the Indian postcolonial elite faced after Independence. Although an entirely national approach to building and planning, drawing exclusively on local South Asian traditions and motives could have been taken at this stage, an even stronger borrowing from the West can be observed.