Abstract
The Indo-French community in Mahé, a French colony in India before 1954, is one among those groups that are least represented in the official and fictional accounts in both India and France. This chapter examines the postcolonial existence of the Indo-French characters in Daivathinte Vikruthikal (1989), a novel by M. Mukundan (1942–) and its film adaptation of the same name (1992) by Lenin Rajendran (1951–2019). The chapter explores the problematized postcolonial identity of the Indo-French in Mahé, a consequence of French assimilative policies that aimed to prevent the formulation of absolute identities. The chapter also addresses the French colonial history of Mahé to examine the historical reasons of assimilation and rejection experienced by the Indo-French in Mahé. The isolation of the Indo-French in Mahé is located within the experienced and represented instances of homelessness and dejection very often faced by many other sections of the Anglo-Indian community.
Mukundan’s novels provide a history of colonialism unavailable in a historian’s oeuvre (Colonialism, Culture, and Resistance 150)
Were we this unwanted in the Mahéan soil?—Lenin Rajendran, Daivathinte Vikruthikal
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Notes
- 1.
Mahé, located in Kerala, is a district of the Union Territory of Pondicherry in India. In Malayalam, the place is also known as Mayyazhi and is named after the eponymous river as the place is situated at the mouth of the river. Mahé and other former French provinces became part of Indian Union in 1954. This chapter would refer to the place as Mahé, except for the quotes from the novel.
- 2.
The novel received the Sahitya Academy Award (1992), and the film received many awards including the Kerala State Film Award for the best film and the best story (1992). The screenplay of the film was written by M. Mukundan and directed by Lenin Rajendran.
- 3.
According to the brochure for the October 1999 conference, ‘Microhistory: Advantages and Limitations for the Study of Early American History’, conducted by the University of Connecticut, microhistories ‘reveal the fundamental experiences and mentalités of ordinary people that broad analyses of nations so often conceal’. The brochure defines microhistory as ‘accounts of hitherto obscure people and events’ that ‘concentrates on the intensive study of particular lives, communities, and unusual events as prisms for understanding larger cultural and social structures’. See: http://oieahc.wm.edu/conferences/micro/ accessed on 27 March 2019.
- 4.
The novel refers to the protagonist as Alphonsachen, a Malayali version of Alphonse. Maggi refers to her husband as Alphonse throughout the novel and the film.
- 5.
As Mukundan was the scriptwriter for the film, the chapter uses the word ‘author’ with respect to both the novel and the film.
- 6.
The English translation of the text uses the phrase ‘people of Mayyazhi’ and the Malayalam coinage for the same is ‘mayyazhikkar’. Adding a poetic quality to the text, Mukundan combines several entities to the word Mayyazhi, for instance, sunlight (veyil) in Mayyazhi becomes Mayyazhiveyil. Keeping up the spirit of the text and the film, I intend to use the word mayyazhikkar and mayyazhikkaran, its singular form while referring to the collective of the residents of Mayyazhi. The chapter enquires how the Indo-French experienced the feeling of not being part of the collective after 1954.
- 7.
K.N. Panikkar’s works include Culture, Ideology and Hegemony – Intellectuals and Social Consciousness in Colonial India (2002) and Before the Night Falls (2002).
- 8.
Kannur and Kozhikode are districts in Northern Kerala.
- 9.
In ‘Interpretation and the Problem of Intention of the Author’, H.G. Gadamer elucidates how the reader is always already affected by history in the process of comprehending a historical phenomenon. E.D. Hirsch posits how historicity is different from historicality. Gadamer’s historicity is a quality that has to change with time. Hirsch suggests that the concept of historicality claims that a meaning can be stabilized only by historical intention.
- 10.
While Chandernagore merged with West Bengal, the other four districts of the Union Territory of Pondicherry were united through the Treaty of Cession of 1956: ‘The Establishments will keep the benefit of the special administrative status which was in force prior to 1 November 1954. Any constitutional changes in this status which may be made subsequently shall be made after ascertaining the wishes of the people’ (Article II).
- 11.
George Bruce Malleson (1825–1898) served as an English officer in India. His works include History of the Indian Mutiny (1857–8), History of the French in India (1893), and The Decisive Battles of India (1888).
- 12.
Citizenship (Pondicherry) Order, 1962: http://www.refworld.org/docid/3ae6b52dc.html.
- 13.
A study by Animesh Rai in 2003–2005 suggests that there are presently about 8000 Indians of French nationality in the Union Territory of Pondicherry and about 2000 of them receive French Pensions. In April 2017 French presidential elections, around 5200 French Nationals from Puducherry, Karaikal, Mahé, and Yanam exercised their franchise. While the records of the French in Mahé are available, there is limited access to the Indo-French in Mahé as their number is believed to have considerably diminished.
- 14.
Mahé is part of the Union territory of Pondicherry/Puducherry although the Mahéans share language and culture with Keralites.
- 15.
A common term that is used to address a female foreigner in Malayalam.
- 16.
The provision of optant that was available for the people of French territory of Pondicherry before 1962. They were eligible for obtaining either a French or an Indian citizenship.
The Citizenship (Pondicherry ) Order, 1962, provided that every French national born in Pondicherry and domiciled therein or elsewhere in India on 16 August 1962 was to be a citizen of India from that date. The option to retain French nationality was given by making a declaration to that effect within six months…Parallel provisions also existed for the citizenship of minors…The minor has been given the right to recover his French nationality, on attaining maturity, through another declaration. (Ko 102)
The people in the French occupied areas of India had the option to be French citizens while living in India. French nationals in India voted for the French presidential election (2017). Neither the novel nor the film clearly indicates whether it was the Indian or French nationality that Alphonsachen opted but he is projected as someone who is a space of convergence for Indian and French cultures. But Alphonsachen’s son Michael, who was a minor when the optant was introduced, opts French citizenship and leaves for France.
- 17.
The portrayal of Maggi’s longing for France and the life she could have had is accompanied by operatic music as the background score in Lenin Rajendran’s adaptation.
- 18.
The 1950s is an important period for the communist history of Kerala. The period witnessed youngsters in the party actively being part of the movement against established hierarchical structures: a reason why Kadungan, a mayyazhikkaran landlord, was attacked.
- 19.
A. Suresh’s PhD thesis ‘Politics and Social Conflicts in French India’, submitted at the Department of History, Pondicherry University explores the events of Colonial Mahé.
- 20.
The Treaty of Paris of 1763 marked the end of the French and Indian War/Seven Years’ War between Great Britain and France, with the British gaining control over many of the French colonies including Caribbean and Indian, thereby ending Joseph-François Dupleix’s dream of establishing a French Empire in India.
- 21.
E.J. Arnett is an the author of other works including Gazetteer of Sokoto Province (1920) and Gazetteer of Zaria Province (1920).
- 22.
The nationalist movements that were prevalent in Mahé under the Mahajana Sabha with I.K. Kumaran as the leader (active from 1937) and the Youth league (active from 1933) became more intense after Indian Independence from British rule in 1947. By October 1948, the Mahéans and the French had agreed to hold elections for the Municipal council, who were to decide whether Mahé will become a part of India. The rebellion continued till a French cruiser anchored off Mahé. French rule was re-established after many of the leaders of the Mahajana Sabha were either arrested and taken or left Mahé out of fear. The firing at Cherukallayi, Mahé, in April 1954, led to the virtual blockade in Mahé in June where both the French and the nationalists were tortured. In an effort to curb the violence, on 16 July 1954, Deschamps the administrator along with other French administrators left Mahé, marking the end of a 233-year-old French rule in Mahé (‘Freedom Struggle’, accessed on 13 September 2020).
- 23.
The novel does not specify this incident but shows Maggi to be distressed because the French left India.
- 24.
This depiction is similar to the way in which Indo-French women’s attire was portrayed in other Malayalam films including Chattakkari . The 1974 film Chattakkari narrates the story of an Anglo-Indian, Christian girl Julie, portrayed by Lakshmi. The film contributing towards solidifying association of the word chattakkari with short frocks in the Malayali imagination.
- 25.
The study of objects, material culture studies, acts as an agent to comprehend societies, their past and present, by subjecting the physical and material objects generated by those societies under careful study and observation.
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Oommen, S.A. (2021). Daivathinte Vikruthikal: Homelessness and Fragmented Identities of Indo-French Families in Mahé, Post-1954. In: Andrews, R., Raj, M.S. (eds) Anglo-Indian Identity. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-64458-1_16
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