The vision that shaped Chandigarh is under fresh scrutiny in the wake of Le Corbusier controversy. Haaretz, Israel’s left-liberal newspaper, noted that the principles of urban planning that Le Corbusier championed “dismantled and undermined the (idea of) traditional city’’.

And those principles, at once subversive and totalitarian, are written all over Chandigarh. Epitomised by its hierarchical structure with the oddly-named Capitol Complex, the hub of political power comprising the State Secretariat, the Assembly and the High Court, designated as the "head" of the city; the commercial centre its "heart"; and housing and other facilities as "arms". People took a backseat in Le Corbusier’s scheme of things.

My acquaintance with Chandigarh is limited. But my first impression when I spent a few days there in 1990s was of a city which radiated coldness despite the enormous warmth of its people. At the time I thought maybe it was just me. But then many years later I read a blog by travel blogger Christian Wild in which he noted how “impersonal’’ the city was because of the way it had been designed.

“It is a vast impersonal grid… Distances are long and the urban spaces… are huge. The spaces seem to be empty…(have you ever seen empty spaces in India?)’’, he wrote (Chandigarh, Crumbling Concrete, Grids and Free Forms, June 9, 2012).

Britain’s Independent newspaper mockingly called it a “tribute to Le Corbusier’s eccentricity’’.

“Chandigarh's regimented grid layout, comprising numbered rectangular ‘superblocks’ …contrasts sharply with the chaotic feel of India's traditional urban destinations. Dominated by Brutalist concrete architecture, Chandigarh is a place that is likely to alienate some new arrivals,’’ it commented.

Well, not just new arrivals as Brolin noted all those years ago.

Meanwhile, even as the "unmasking" of the great Swiss-French architect as an ardent Hitler admirer and an anti-Semite has shocked Europe overshadowing his 50th death anniversary commemorations, surprisingly it has attracted little attention in India.

Even in Chandigarh, it has been greeted with typically Indian indifference to historical events. Some people I spoke to shrugged it off. How did it matter what Le Corbusier's politics was? they wondered.

"Ki faraq painda?’’ was the response of one Punjabi friend.