NEK CHAND

First published: Winter 2024/2025

To commemorate the 100th anniversary of Nek Chand’s birth, Raw Vision is proud to publish the story of his monumental creation in his own words

Born on December 15, 1924, Nek Chand Saini grew up in the village of Barian Kalan in, what is now, Pakistan. After being forced to flee his home amidst the horror of the Partition of India, he eventually found work as a road builder, constructing India’s first planned city, Chandigarh. It was there that he began to create a secret garden which eventually became the world’s largest folk-art environment. By the time he died in 2015, Nek Chand was regarded as one of the world ‘s foremost self-taught artists, and his extraordinary 25-acre Rock Garden – with its 2,000 statues, waterfalls and amphitheatres – remains unsurpassed.

In 2011, Candace Wolf, oral historian and storyteller, visited the Rock Garden to record Chand’s testimony. As they walked around the city, crowds gathered to greet the artist with warmth, veneration and jubilation. “It was on that day that I understood that I was in the presence of a genuine folk hero,” says Wolf. Here then is Nek Chand’s story in his own words...

Nek Chand with some of his sculptures, 1993; photo: Rod Waddington Image, courtesy: Nek Chand Foundation

“Some people tell me that the name Nek Chand means “new moon” . Many times, I saw the moon in my village, many times. There was no electricity. There were no candles. We walked by the light of the moon, going out to the fields in the dark night. Early in the morning, we plowed the fields with the buffaloes. We grew wheat, dhals, sugarcane, corn. During the hot summers, we would sleep outside on the roof. During the cold winters, when the winds came down from the mountains, we sat around the fire and talked and smoked the hookahs and told stories.

“This was the time of the British Raj.

“Then we started hearing names from the Independence Movement: Nehru, Gandhi, Jinnah. By that time, I was growing a little bit bigger and I began to listen. I began to think, ‘who are the Britishers to rule our country? They are selling their products in India and taking the money out so England gets rich and India gets poor.’

Courtiers, coloured cement; courtesy: Nek Chand Foundation

“When Independence came, I was still in my village. But in 1947, my family had to leave. Pakistan announced that now it had separated with India and no Hindu could stay there. The killings had started. Oh! There were so many killings! If somebody wanted to stay, they would be killed. On this side also. Those who wanted to go to Pakistan – the Mohammedans – if they stayed in India, they would be killed.

“This was all due to the Britisher. This was due to the rulers! The small people, like my family – the farmers and the people who lived in the villages – they did not know what was going on. Only that on one side there is India, and on the other side Pakistan is going to be born. Only big leaders, they knew.