Right in the heart of India lies a city where the gendarmes wear bright red French képis. The French consulate, the Notre-Dame church and the French war memorial number among the most prominent buildings. The roughly 220,000 inhabitants even have an Alliance Française and an Institut Français. The city of Pondicherry (»Pondichéry« in French, in English now known as »Puducherry« – the name was harmonised with the Indian name in 2006) can be viewed as a curiosity of cultural history. Although it did not become part of India until 1954, way back in 1754 the formal capital of the four French possessions in India once and for all lost any chance of becoming a French colony like Quebec was in those days or as Algeria later became. That was the year when Joseph-François Dupleix, the city’s most important governor, departed. In the twelve preceding years, Dupleix’ military conquests and his alliances with various Indian royal families had meant that much of southern India was under French rule. The increasing power of the »British East India Company«, supported by the British state, was not confirmed until they had finally beaten the French in 1763 and subsequently vanquished their Indian allies (such as the Kingdom of Mysore) in 1799. The two Treaties of Paris between the European colonial powers in 1763 and 1814 strictly prohibited both the exercise of French military power in these five possessions (Pondicherry, Karikal, Chandannagar, Yanam and Mahe) and any extension of these territories. Trade did however continue in colonial produce such as indigo, cotton and spices and a French presence remained.

Nowadays French culture is both alive and dead in this isolated corner of the world on the coast of Southern India. After the referendum in 1954, Jawaharlal Nehru proposed that the city should showcase French culture in India. And the French cultural apparatus supported this wish by establishing numerous institutions for local people as well as for French citizens doing research on India. This latter category also included a branch of a national research institute: the École Française d’Extrême Orient. There was nonetheless scant commitment to the five former possessions on the part of la Francophonie – the official global community of French-speaking nations. The reason is probably that for countries in the South, la Francophonie functions primarily at state level (the only two regions represented are in countries in the northern hemisphere: Belgium and Canada). At the end of the day non-state organisations, such as the ashrams Auroville and Sri Aurobindo, have become established there most successfully with relaxed internationalism in the cultural mould. The first inhabitants of Auroville could design and build their own houses. When a German-speaking pioneer noticed the diversity of different nationalities in the ashram, including his own »Hansel-and-Gretel gabled house«, he commented that the form of a house is probably »genetically determined «.¹

One might be inclined to view these former trading centres exclusively from the French point of view and to consider their status between 1754 and 1954 as a historical vestige of French colonisation of India or view them in the period between 1954 and today as »living museums« of French culture.² That is how Pondicherry is actually often perceived in France. A group of British and French researchers in Liverpool has however addressed this case in different terms. It reveals that sometimes colonialism did not function as it was actually supposed to, because from 1763 to 1947 French colonisation was under pressure from another colonial power, namely the British Empire. The four-year project »Peripheral Voices in European Colonialism 1754–1954/Les voix marginales dans le colonialisme européen 1754–1954« attempts to develop a post-colonial discourse in two languages and for two cultures and in the process to escape the national limitations of colonialism and post-colonialism research.³ It is high time to develop »trans-national post-colonialism research« building on the foundations devised in English from 1980 to 1990 focusing on British former colonies in Asia and Africa. These foundations and sources should however be extended by incorporating multilateral power relations in other areas (for example in Mauritius, in Canada or in the Caribbean) and colonial players from other countries active in India (such as for example Portugal, the Netherlands, France, Denmark and Sweden). It is important to find out how these countries colonised territories in India – colonialism also functions in a fashion akin to firms competing with each other – and what after-effects this colonisation had on depictions of India in the respective languages. In French-language descriptions of India, one finds not only the aforementioned exoticism but also a mix of both admiration for and vigorous criticism of British colonialism.

This triangulation in respect of the roles of the French, Indians and British can help not only to make the post-colonial discourse more intercultural, but reveals too that colonial power relations come into play on several levels. Power relations between the various groups in the population can be identified back in the pre-colonial era and were frequently exploited by colonisers rather than being surmounted. That was the case with the Ashanti tribe, which was partly involved in the West African slave trade alongside the Europeans. This was also what happened in the 18th century in cooperation between Europeans and the remnants of the Mughal empire in India. And it is also the case for neo-colonialism, which first of all thoroughly explores a country’s power structure before exploiting it. Only a comparative analysis can do justice to this and thus help to renew the post-colonial discourse.

 

Translated by Helen Ferguson

 

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