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IMAGINING INDIA, DECOLONIZING L'INDE FRANÇAISE, c. 1947–1954*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 October 2015

AKHILA YECHURY
AKHILA YECHURY*
Affiliation:
University of St Andrews
*
School of History, University of St Andrews, St Katharine's Lodge, The Scores, St Andrews, Fife, ky16 9ba[email protected]
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Abstract

This article examines the final years of French rule in India. It questions the established narrative of the merger of the French settlements, which implied that they were always a ‘natural’ part of the Indian Union. It argues, on the contrary, that a full merger was only one of several possibilities for the various actors involved in the negotiations that took place between the independence of India in 1947 and the French withdrawal in 1954. Even those who supported a merger did so for different reasons, while a significant proportion opposed the merger on economic, social, and historical grounds. By examining more closely the opposing positions in the merger debate, we can locate them within the larger tensions of early post-colonial India – a new state that was struggling to define its geographical and ideological boundaries. This suggests that the decolonization of French India was not simply another chapter in French imperial decline; it was also an important example of Indian nation-building.

Type
Articles
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 58 , Issue 4 , December 2015 , pp. 1141 - 1165
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

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Footnotes

*

My biggest debt is to Chris Bayly who was a most generous and encouraging supervisor. I would like to thank the organizers and participants of the Seventh International Seminar on Decolonization (2012) at the National History Centre, Washington DC, where the first draft of this article was discussed. I am grateful to Anish Vanaik and the two peer reviewers for their comments which have vastly improved the final version. I especially want to thank Emile Chabal for being a big source of support and inspiration.

References

1 The most detailed work in English is Ajit Neogy, Decolonization of French India: liberation movement and Indo-French relations, 1947–1954 (Pondicherry, 1997). Kate Marsh, Fictions of 1947: representations of Indian decolonization, 1919–1962 (Oxford and New York, NY, 2007); and William F. S. Miles, Imperial burdens: countercolonialism in former French India (Boulder, CO, 1995), devote considerable attention to the process of decolonization in French India while J. B. P. More, Freedom movement in French India: the Mahé revolt of 1948 (Tellicherry, 2001); and Claude Arpi, Pondicherry: the last months before India's independence: perspectives of a British consul general (Auroville, 2005), focus on certain aspects of the end of French rule. In French, apart from Patrick Pitoëff, ‘L'Inde française en sursis, 1947–1954’, Revue française d'histoire d'Outre-mer, 68 (1991), pp. 105–31Google Scholar; and a section in Jacques Weber, Pondichéry et les comptoirs de l'Inde après Dupleix: la démocratie au pays des castes (Paris, 1996), most other works, such as Georges Chaffard, Les carnets secrets de la décolonisation (Paris, 1965), are compilations of documents or anecdotal recollections.

2 Discussions of the French presence in India are usually in the context of eighteenth-century Franco-British rivalry in India. The end of French rule, if mentioned at all, is dismissed in a sentence or two. The textbooks I have referred to include Crispin Bates, Subalterns and the Raj: South Asia since 1600 (London, 2007); Shekhar Bandopadhyay, From Plassey to Partition: a history of modern India (New Delhi, 2004); Barbara D. Metcalf and Thomas R. Metcalf, A concise history of India (Cambridge and New York, NY, 2002); Sugata Bose and Ayesha Jalal, Modern South Asia: history, culture, political economy (London, 1998); and Sumit Sarkar, Modern India: 1885–1947 (Basingstoke, 1989).

3 ‘Vindication of Peaceful Methods’, message to be read out by the foreign secretary at Pondicherry on the occasion of transfer of power on 1 Nov. 1954, Beijing, 24 Oct. 1954, Selected works of Jawaharlal Nehru, 2nd series (61 vols., New Delhi, c. 1984–c. 2014) (SWJN), xxvii, p. 221.

4 Willem van Schendel, The Bengal borderland: beyond state and nation in South Asia (London, 2005), p. 25.

5 Ramachandra Guha, India after Gandhi: the history of the world's largest democracy (London, 2008), pp. 35–58.

6 Srinath Raghavan, War and peace in modern India (Basingstoke, 2010), pp. 65–100; and Taylor Sherman, State violence and punishment in India (London, 2010), pp. 151–69.

7 For a detailed analysis of the Dravidian movement, see Raj Sekhar Basu, Nandanar's children: the Paraiyans' tryst with destiny, Tamil Nadu, 1850–1956 (New Delhi, 2011).

8 Sankaran Krishna, Postcolonial insecurities: India, Sri Lanka, and the question of nationhood (Minneapolis, MN, 1999), pp. 3–17.

9 For an illuminating analysis of this vision, see Sunil Khilnani, Idea of India (New Delhi, 1999).

10 Akhila Yechury, ‘L'Inde retrouvée: loss and sovereignty in French Calicut, 1867–1868’, in Kate Marsh and Nicola Frith, eds., France's lost empires: fragmentation, nostalgia and la fracture coloniale (Lanham, MD, 2011), pp. 101–5.

11 Héloïse Finch-Boyer makes a compelling case for re-examining decolonization from the perspective of the overseas departments in ‘“The idea of the nation was superior to race”: transforming racial contours and social attitudes and decolonizing the French empire from la Réunion, 1946–1973’, French Historical Studies, 36 (2013), pp. 109–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12 Frederick Cooper, ‘Alternatives to nationalism in French Africa, 1945–1960’, in Jost Dülffer and Marc Frey, eds., Elites and decolonization in the twentieth century (Basingstoke, 2011).

13 J. Chaumont, L'Inde en mouvement: une chance à saisir pour la France (Rapport d'Information du Sénat, 476 (98–9)), www.senat.fr/rap/r98-476/r98-476_mono.html#toc102 (accessed 11 Dec. 2014). The statistics in this report are from 1999. They place the number of French citizens in Pondicherry at 8,146. However, the figures in the report do not distinguish between expatriates from France and French Indians. Given the number of French expatriates in other parts of India (530 in Delhi, 535 in Mumbai, and 67 in Kolkata), it is reasonable to assume that a large proportion of French citizens in Pondicherry are French Indians. More recent figures indicate that the number of French citizens in Pondicherry continues to rise – between 2012 and 2013, consular figures indicated a rise of 4.8 per cent. See ‘Population française inscrite à l’étranger au 31 décembre 2013’, www.diplomatie.gouv.fr/fr/vivre-a-l-etranger/la-presence-francaise-a-l-etranger-4182/ (accessed 11 Dec. 2014).

14 For succinct accounts of the economic impact of the war on British India and imperial fragility, see P. J. Cain and Anthony G. Hopkins, British imperialism: 1688–2000 (Harrow, 2002), pp. 559–64; and Kamtekar, Indivar, ‘The shiver of 1942’, Studies in History, n.s., 18 (2002), pp. 81–102CrossRefGoogle Scholar respectively.

15 For an elaboration of these themes, see Eric T. Jennings, Vichy in the tropics: Pétain's national revolution in Madagascar, Guadeloupe, and Indochina, 1940–1944 (Stanford, CA, 2001); Martin Thomas, The French empire at war, 1940–1945 (Manchester, 1998); and Akhila Yechury and Emile Chabal, ‘France, Britain and the world’, in Robert Tombs and Emile Chabal, eds., Britain and France in two world wars: truth, myth and memory (London, 2013).

16 Martin Thomas, Bob Moore, and L. J. Butler, Crises of empire: decolonization and Europe's imperial states, 1918–1975 (London, 2008), pp. 136–8.

17 Frederick Cooper, ‘Alternatives to empire: France and Africa after World War II’, in Douglas Howland and Louise White, eds., The state of sovereignty: territories, laws, populations (Bloomington, IN, 2009), pp. 94–116.

18 The Assemblée représentative would have forty-four elected members; twenty-two from Pondicherry, twelve from Karikal, five from Chandernagore, and two from Yanam.

19 Neogy, Decolonization of French India, pp. 35–6.

20 V. Subbiah, Saga of freedom of French India: testament of my life (Madras, 1990), pp. 226–8.

21 Ibid., pp. 232–3.

22 In a survey about the elections of 1951, conducted by Victor D. Paul, the chief consular assistant of the US consulate in Madras, a number of interviewees affirmed that as a practice the candidate supported by the government usually won elections by huge margins, not because they were popular but because they were powerful and could bribe or threaten voters. Robert Rossow Jr, US consul, Madras, to secretary of state, 11 July 1951, National Archives II, College Park (NARA), Record Group (RG) 59, Central Decimal File (CDF) 751F.00/7–1151. A succinct assessment of the electoral practices in French India can be found in Jacques Weber, ‘Chanemougham, “King of French India”, social and political foundations of an absolute power under the Third Republic’, Economic and Political Weekly, 9 Feb. 1991, pp. 291–302.

23 Pitoëff, ‘L'Inde française en sursis’, p. 112. For contemporary assessments of the elections, see Subbiah, Saga of freedom, p. 231, Raphael R. Dadala, My struggle for the freedom of French India: an autobiography (Kakinada, n.d.), p. 8.

24 Subbiah, Saga of freedom, p. 230.

25 The chancery, Paris, to the department of external affairs and commonwealth relations, New Delhi, 11 July 1947, The National Archives (TNA), Foreign Office (FO) 371/63575.

26 Statesman, 4 Aug. 1947.

27 Francis Cyril Antony, ed., The gazetteer of India: Union Territory of Pondicherry (2 vols., Pondicherry, 1982), i, p. 252; French settlements in India (New Delhi, n.d.), pp. 18–19; Subbiah, Saga of freedom, pp. 257–8.

28 Neogy, Decolonization of French India, pp. 54–5.

29 L. Schaffer, Madras, India, to secretary of state, Washington DC, 6 Aug. 1947, NARA, RG 59, CDF 851F.00/8–647.

30 ‘Déclaration conjointe du 28 août 1947’, cited and translated by Neogy, Decolonization of French India, p. 59.

31 Pitoëff, ‘L'Inde française en sursis’, p. 116. This was also the common view of most contemporaries, Indian, British, French, and American.

32 For more on the developments in Indochina and Madagascar, see Thomas, Moore, and Butler, Crises of empire, pp. 182–204 and 254–60. For Indochina in particular, also see Nicola Cooper, France in Indochina: colonial encounters (Oxford, 2001), pp. 177–221; and Martin Shipway, The road to war: France and Vietnam, 1944–1947 (Providence, RI, and Oxford, 1996).

33 L. Schaffer, Madras, India, to secretary of state, Washington DC, 6 Aug. 1947, NARA, RG 59, CDF 851F.00/8–647, Duff Cooper, British embassy, Paris, to Ernest Bevin, MP, 2 Dec. 1947, TNA, FO, 371/63575.

34 Christopher Bayly and Tim Harper, Forgotten wars: the end of Britain's Asian empire (London, 2008), p. 155; Benjamin Zachariah, Nehru (London, 2004), p. 158.

35 Journal officiel de la République française: Débat parlementaire, Assemblée nationale, 9 June 1948, p. 3289. N. V. Rajkumar, The problem of French India (Delhi, 1951), pp. 23–7.

36 Discours prononcé par le Gouverneur C. F. Baron, Commissaire de la République pour l'Inde Française, le 31 mars 1948, lors de la céremonie d'ouverture de l'Assemblée representative de l'Inde Française (Pondicherry, 1948).

37 Rajkumar, The problem of French India, pp. 4, 23–4.

38 Neogy, Decolonization of French India, pp. 79–80; Pitoëff, ‘L'Inde française en sursis’, p. 113.

39 Guha, India after Gandhi, p. 73.

40 Pitoëff, ‘L'Inde française en sursis’, p. 110; and Weber, Pondichéry et les comptoirs de l'Inde, pp. 323–407.

41 Neogy, Decolonization of French India; More, Freedom movement in French India; Sailendra Nath Sen, Chandernagore: from bondage to freedom, 1900–1955 (Delhi, 2012).

42 Miles, Imperial burdens, pp. 57–81.

43 Akhila Yechury, ‘Contending colonialisms: the Anglo-French border in India, 1860–1914’ (M.Phil. dissertation, Jawaharlal Nehru University, 2007), chs. 2 and 3; and Akhila Yechury, ‘Empire, nation and the French settlements in India, c. 1930–1954’ (Ph.D. thesis, Cambridge, 2011), ch. 4.

44 Jefferson Caffery, embassy of the USA, Paris, to secretary of state, Washington DC, 23 Aug. 1946, NARA, RG 59, CDF 851F.01/8–2346.

45 ‘Jaipur resolution’, 19 Dec. 1948, SWJN, viii, pp. 426–7.

46 French pockets in India (Madras, [1953?]), p. 1.

47 Jawaharlal Nehru on foreign affairs to the Constituent Assembly, 8 Mar. 1949, NARA, RG 59, CDF 851F.00/3–1249.

48 Speech by Jai Prakash Narain at Pondicherry on 11 Apr. 1948, The Hindu, 12 Apr. 1948.

49 Articles appearing in Indian Express, Hindu, Hindustan Times, Statesman, and Times of India, 1946–54.

50 Hindu, 15 Dec. 1950, reproduced in French pockets in India, p. 8.

51 Biographie, Lambert Saravane (1907–1979), www.assembleenationale.fr/sycomore/fiche.asp?num_dept=6287 (accessed 10 Dec. 2014).

52 For the significance of the idea and image of Bharat Mata for Indian nationalism, see Manu Goswami, Producing India: from colonial economy to national space (Chicago, IL, 2004), pp. 199–207; Sumathy Ramaswamy, The goddess and the nation: mapping mother India (Durham, NC, and London, 2010).

53 Goswami, Producing India, pp. 156–7.

54 Ramaswamy in The goddess and the nation has emphasized the significance of the imagery of the mother as India to construct and reinforce a sense of collective where there was none and the importance of maps and divine creation in reaffirming borders which were modern and beyond the lived experience of the majority of Indian population. For a discussion of the Mother India temple, see pp. 151–5.

55 The Indian National Congress had reluctantly accepted the idea of separate electorates for Muslims, first introduced by the Morley-Minto reforms of 1909. The Communal Award of 1932 sought to extend separate electorates to Sikhs, Christians, and Dalits amongst others. Separate electorates for Dalits was met with severe opposition and eventually B. R. Ambedkar, a Dalit leader and advocate of the policy, bowed to the wishes of the Congress after Gandhi went on an indefinite hunger strike.

56 For details of the revolts in Chandernagore, see Neogy, Decolonization of French India, pp. 55–6 and 81–2; and for Mahé, see More, Freedom movement in French India, pp. 115–58.

57 Times of India, 13 Aug. 1947.

58 Neogy, Decolonization of French India, pp. 81–2.

59 ‘Mahé – brief history of situation – reported’, from P. A. Antony, vice-consul, Pondicherry, to consul general of India, Pondicherry, 30 Jan. 1950, National Archives of India, New Delhi (NAI), External Affairs (EA), 35-R&I, 1950.

60 Arpi, Pondicherry, p. 37.

61 Deccan Times, 20 July 1947 (note: the page on which the article referred to appears has a printing error; it is dated 20 June 1947, even though it is in the paper dated 20 July 1947).

62 S. K. Banerji, consul-general of India, Fortnightly Report no. 2, 15–31 Jan. 1950, NAI, EA, 35-R&I, 1950.

63 ‘Report on local events’, 1–15 Apr. 1949, NAI, EA, 55-R&I, 1949.

64 Fortnightly Report no. 16, 16–31 Aug. 1950, NAI, EA, 35-R&I, 1950. République française seems to be a more independent paper than the others. It carried criticism of the Socialist party and the Indian government in equal measure.

65 Times of India, 14 May 1947.

66 Fortnightly Report no. 6, 16–31 Mar. 1950, NAI, EA, 35-R&I, 1950.

67 Joya Chatterji, Spoils of Partition: Bengal and India, 1947–1967 (Cambridge, 2007), pp. 172–3; Vazira Fazila-Yacoobali Zamindar, The long Partition and the making of modern South Asia: refugees, boundaries, histories (New York, NY, 2007), pp. 91–4; and Mushirul Hasan, Legacy of a divided nation: India's Muslims since independence (London, 1997), pp. 166–81.

68 Fortnightly Report no. 12, 16–30 June 1950, NAI, EA, 35-R&I, 1950.

69 Fortnightly Report no. 14, 16–31 July 1950, NAI, EA, 35-R&I, 1950.

70 ‘The Communist party of French India’, press report, Mar. 1949, Tamilnadu State Archives, under secretary of state, secret files, GO 75, 13–10–1949.

71 Propaganda, 16–31 Jan. 1950, NAI, EA, 35-R&I, 1950.

72 Fortnightly Report no. 12, 16–30 June 1950, NAI, EA, 35-R&I, 1950.

73 Fortnightly Report no. 23, 1–15 Dec. 1950, NAI, EA, 35-R&I, 1950.

74 The most cited of these were the experiences of Hyderabad and Pudukottai. The Nizam of Hyderabad had resisted the merger with India and, as late as September 1948, had hoped to continue as an autonomous state. The late 1940s and early 1950s was a period of communist insurgency, communal violence, and state repression. See Raghavan, War and peace, pp. 65–100; and Sherman, State violence and punishment, pp. 151–69. Pudukkottai was a princely state that had been annexed by India in 1948.

75 Propaganda, 1–15 Sept. 1949, NAI, EA, 55-R&I, 1949.

76 Propaganda, 16–31 Dec. 1949, NAI, EA, 55-R&I, 1949.

77 ‘Report on local events’, 1–15 Aug. 1949, NAI, EA, 55-R&I, 1949.

78 The strength of this cultural identity can be judged from the fact that in the 1970s the Union Territory of Pondicherry (which included Pondicherry, Karikal, Yanam, and Mahé) successfully resisted its merger with contiguous states and till today maintains itself as a separate state with its own local government. Details of the debate in 1970s can be found in P. Krishnamoorthy, Pondicherry: legal defence against merger (Pondicherry, 1979).

79 Fortnightly Report no. 12, 16–30 June 1950, NAI, EA, 35-R&I, 1950.

80 For a detailed study of the Dravidian movement, see Basu, Nandanar's children.

81 ‘Memoranda of conversation’, Robert Rossow Jr, US consul, Madras, to secretary of state, 11 July 1951, NARA, RG 59, CDF 751F.00/7–1151.

82 ‘Report on local events’, 1–15 Apr. 1949, NAI, EA, 55-R&I, 1949.

83 ‘Report on local events’, 1–15 Aug. 1949, NAI, EA, 55-R&I, 1949.

84 ‘Report on local events’, 16–31 Aug. 1949, NAI, EA, 55-R&I, 1949.

85 Fortnightly Report no. 9, 1–15 May 1950, NAI, EA, 35-R&I, 1950.

86 Fortnightly Report no. 14, 16–31 July 1950, NAI, EA, 35-R&I, 1950.

87 Fortnightly Report no. 21, 1–15 Nov. 1950, NAI, EA, 35-R&I, 1950.

88 Propaganda, 16–31 Aug. 1949, NAI, EA, 55-R&I, 1949.

89 Fortnightly Report no. 2, 15–31 Jan. 1950, NAI, EA, 35-R&I, 1950.

90 Vazira Fazila-Yacoobali Zamindar, ‘A rite of passage: the partition of history and the Dawn of Pakistan’, in Tai Yong Tan and Gyanesh Kudaisya, eds., Partition and post-colonial South Asia, i (London and New York, NY, 2008), p. 153.

91 Telegram from Indian embassy, Paris, to Foreign, New Delhi, 16 July 1949, EA 15(58)-Eur i, 1949.

92 Robert Rossow Jr, US consul, Madras, to secretary of state, 11 July 1951, NARA, RG 59, CDF 751F.00/7–1151.

93 Rajkumar, The problem of French India, pp. 82–3; Subbiah, Saga of freedom, pp. 264–5.

94 Only two of the thirty-five interviewed had voted in Pondicherry and a number of them mentioned that candidates supported by the government usually won elections ‘even without the people casting their vote’ for them. Robert Rossow Jr, US consul, Madras, to secretary of state, 11 July 1951, NARA, RG 59, CDF 751F.00/7–1151.

95 ‘Memoranda of conversation’, ibid.

96 For details about these ‘liberations’, see Neogy, Decolonization of French India, pp. 236–7; Miles, Imperial burdens, p. 74.

97 Foreign Service Despatch no. 727, Madras, 24 June 1954, NARA, RG 59, CDF 751F.00/6–2454.

98 Nehru to N. Sanjiva Reddy, deputy chief minister, Andhra Pradesh, 18 June 1954, SWJN, xxvi, p. 434.

99 Foreign Service Despatch no. 13, Madras, 9 July 1954, NARA, RG 59, CDF 751F.00/7–954. For a detailed analysis of the relationship between Indian nationalists (especially Gandhi) and the ‘Goa question’, see Gupta, Pamila, ‘Gandhi and the Goa question’, Public Culture, 23 (2011), pp. 320–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

100 Foreign Service Despatch no. 13, Madras, 9 July 1954, NARA, RG 59, CDF 751F.00/7–954.

101 Alice L. Conklin, Sarah Fishman, and Robert Zaretsky, France and its empire since 1870 (Oxford, 2011), p. 268.

102 Miles, Imperial burdens, p. 74.

103 Insight, Practical politics: a documentary study of the French India Socialist party (Pondicherry, n.d.), pp. 13–14.

104 Rajkumar, The problem of French India, p. 73.

105 Chaffard, Les carnets secrets de la décolonisation, p. 222. Most scholarly accounts concur with this assessment. Weber, Pondichéry et les comptoirs de l'Inde, pp. 389–90 ; Pitoëff, ‘L'Inde française en sursis’, pp. 124–5; Miles, Imperial burdens, pp. 65–6.

106 Miles, Imperial burdens, pp. 75, 78–9.

107 Goubert and his colleagues, who had been described as gangsters and smugglers in official records before 1954, were celebrated as nationalist leaders in the Who's who of freedom fighters of French India published in 1966. Who's who of Freedom Fighters/ compiled under government authority by the Who's Who Committee, Pondicherry (Pondicherry, 1966).

108 ‘Vindication of Peaceful Methods’, message to be read out by the foreign secretary at Pondicherry on the occasion of transfer of power on 1 Nov. 1954, Beijing, 24 Oct. 1954, SWJN, xxvii, p. 221.