3 - Inclusive and Exclusive Visions of Citizenship in French India

Summary

Abstract

The chapter explores the concept of citizenship in legal, social, and cultural terms and examines its inclusivity and exclusivity with respect to the various social groups that existed during the earlier part of the Third Republic (1870–1914). It also provides a description of the new local political institutions created in Pondicherry. Concepts of categorization, self-understanding, and Max Weber's sense of belonging together facilitate our understanding of how groups belong to the imperial nation, but also the extent to which they would support the Third Republic's political project. Subsequently, the political infighting regarding citizenship presents the major issues and different hopes that were at stake for diverse factions on the ground and how thoroughly universal republican rights were implemented in Pondicherry.

Keywords: laws, citizenship, inclusion, exclusion, cultural rights, political Institutions

Given the continuum of citizenship in Pondicherry to French citizenship in the metropole, this chapter concerns the extent to which the Third Republic was inclusive of its colonized people in French India. Could male Indians obtain full citizenship rights in a colonial society, or were they condemned to being ‘second-class’ citizens? This chapter shows that a traditional Greek concept of citizenship (inclusive of political rights) was applied to the French establishments in India and expands this finding to the notions of social (access to education and employment) and cultural citizenship rights. The issue of a cultural dimension of citizenship in terms of ‘norms, practices, meanings’ emerged, because notions of self-understanding and belonging were being reconfigured within an ethnically and cultural heterogenous population. Indeed, cultural citizenship focuses on the preservation and development of cultural lineages thanks to education, customs, language, religion, and the positive acknowledgement of differences in and by main-stream society.

Thus, this chapter also focuses on two questions: how did various native groups respond to receive citizenship’ rights, and why did some groups support this project while others opposed it? This chapter argues that Indians’ responses to this political project were shaped by the social and political ramifications of group identification that began with the implementation of republican citizenship, which then created new identification categories and weakened old ones. The Indian population was far from being a monolithic body in Pondicherry; some dominant groups negotiated their collective self-understanding to advance their shared concerns and material interests.