Georges Bataille (1897–1962) was a contemporary of Le Corbusier (1887–1965) and one of the most important thinkers of the twentieth century. He gave Le Corbusier a copy of his most celebrated book, La Part Maudite (The accursed share) and inscribed it with a warm dedication. At the time he received this gift, Le Corbusier was about to embark on the planning of Chandigarh in India. On his way to India, Le Corbusier read the book; he read it autobiographically, the same way he had read his copy of Homer's The Iliad and Friedrich Nietzsche's Thus Spake Zarathustra. Le Corbusier's reading of La Part Maudite is a significant event in his late intellectual life. This essay reflects on the nature of Le Corbusier's reading. It traces the circumstances of the friendship between these two very different thinkers and speculates on the origin of their affinities and the confluence of the ideas that brought them together. I argue that the notions of the gift and potlatch in La Part Maudite, coming to Bataille from Marcel Mauss, are at the origin of the idea of the Open Hand in India.