‘Les cinq noms sonores’: the French voice in the story of British India 1763–1954

Between Marginality and Universality: Present Tensions and Paradoxes in French Colonial Cultural Heritage, Civilizing Mission, and Citizenship in Puducherry, India

“…Changing fortunes notwithstanding, throughout their existence the French possessions in India were subject to a relative geographic, political and economic insignificance as compared with greater French colonies such as Indochina or Algeria. At a symbolic level they nonetheless remained important to France (Magedera and Marsh 2005;Marsh 2011Marsh , 2007. This ambiguity in status and significance is well captured in the way in which the grandiloquent denominations L'Inde française ('French India') and 'Les Indes' ('The Indies') were applied to cover what was in reality a set of minor, geographically isolated and highly disparate territories reaching an extent of just 508 square kilometers in total (Magedera 2010).…”

“…Colonial and postcolonial constructions of the identity and past of the French Indian territories and their capital have been discussed from both French and Indian perspectives with emphasis on a range of historical as well as sociological and literary contexts (e.g. Sen 1958;Miles 1990Miles , 1995Das 1992;Weber 2002;Annousamy 2005;Magedera and Marsh 2005;Marsh 2008;Rai 2008;Malangin 2015). However, the heritage development which has been going on with increasing pace in recent decades, notably in the capital, has not hitherto been the focus of investigation outside of publications concerning the colonial period architecture which is now sought to be preserved (e.g.…”