Pondicherry stayed French until 1954, and France took until 1962 to agree
On India's southeast coast sits a city once nicknamed the French Riviera of the East. France ruled Pondicherry on and off for centuries, handed it over in practice on 1 November 1954, signed a treaty in 1956, and only ratified the transfer in 1962. A French consulate and institute still operate there.
The place was trading with the Mediterranean long before any French ship arrived. Roman merchants knew a market called Poduke, mentioned in the first-century Periplus of the Erythraean Sea and possibly identical with Arikamedu, about 3.2 km from today's city. Its official name, Puducherry, is read in Tamil as new town, and an older name, Vedapuri, recalls scholars of the Vedas who lived there. Pallavas, Cholas, Pandyas, the Vijayanagara Nayaks and the Sultan of Bijapur ruled in turn.
The French East India Company set up a trading post in 1674, and governor Francois Martin built it into the chief French base in India, dealing in jewels and gems then fashionable at European courts. A canal split the town into a French Quarter and an Indian Quarter. Control changed hands repeatedly: a Dutch fleet of seventeen ships and 1,600 men bombarded it for two weeks in 1693, forcing Martin to surrender, before the Peace of Ryswick restored it in 1699. Britain seized it in 1761 and again in 1793, returning it each time.
The end of French rule came from below. In March 1954, municipalities representing roughly 90 per cent of the population of French India demanded merger with India, and that October 170 of 178 voting local representatives backed it. The de facto handover followed within weeks, ending 138 years of continuous French control, though opposition in France delayed the National Assembly's ratification until 16 August 1962.
Geography now poses its own problems. The city sits at sea level among backwaters, and a breakwater built in 1989 just to the south set off severe erosion; a broad sandy beach has been replaced by a 2-km granite seawall standing 8.5 m above sea level, topped up with boulders every year. That wall has pushed erosion northward onto fishing villages and badly damaged the intertidal zone. The 2011 census counted 244,377 residents with 80.6 per cent literacy, and most speak Tamil.
Source: Pondicherry
