By sidelining French, CBSE undermines a living bridge between worlds in Pondicherry

In the narrow, arid alleys of Kurussukupam, Kel’nna was a household name. She was the devoted wife of a rickshaw driver, tirelessly caring for a brood of children with her calloused hands and unwavering spirit.

Her real name was rarely used. She was known simply as Kel’nna. When she examined a piece of cloth or some vegetables, she would tilt her head and ask earnestly, “Kel’nna?” – her version of “Combien, anna?”, mixing French with the old colonial copper coin called the anna.

Kel’nna had a whimsical obsession with Frenchifying the names of her children, as if she dreamed of making them into tiny French royals ruling over the domain of the sidewalk. Thus Arumugam became “Six Visages”, Ezhumalai “Sept Montagnes”, Karuppusamy “Noir Dieu”, the limping one was endearingly called Nondi Karuppan, “Boiteux Noir”, and Paarthasarathi proudly went by “Boîte-à-Sardine”, or Sardine Tin.

In April, with the start of the new academic year, the Central Board of Secondary Education put in place its three-language rule which mandates that students learn at least two Indian languages. Since English is considered a “foreign language”, students will no longer be offered the option of studying French or German or other such languages.

In Pondicherry, the sidelining of French will extinguish the light in the minds of countless young learners who understood their Tamil heritage through a second, equally affectionate perspective.

It threatens to silence a crucial part of the history of cultural fusion in modern India and weaken a central link that has allowed Pondicherry to remain a place of genuine cosmopolitanism. Even after Pondicherry ceded to India, the language functioned as a connection to its multicultural past.

Axing French from schooling, shuts the doors that once allowed many, like Kel’nna’s grandchildren, to inherit both “Noir Dieu” and Victor Hugo simultaneously.

In Dubrayapeth, further south of Kurussukupam, there lived Velankanni, who had worked for many years as a housekeeper and errand runner for my French teacher, Pierre Bourdat. Velankanni was an introvert who went about his daily tasks with decorum.

But when he spoke, there was a magical transformation. His French was a glorious, flowing gibberish, a torrent of half-remembered words, invented grammar and Tamil rhythms delivered in a perfect Parisian accent.

He exhibited the quintessential Parisian nonverbal cues, such as the dramatic shoulder shrug, the casual sway of his cropped hair that gracefully fell over his brow from time to time, and the effortless Gallic gestures that suggested he had just emerged from a café on the Boulevard Saint-Germain.

If you closed your eyes, you would have sworn you were conversing with an elderly Parisian gentleman discussing philosophy over a glass of wine.

On Dumas Street, formerly known as Rue des Francais, a parrot belonging to a Creole family swayed on its perch in a bamboo cage repeating: “Koi don? Tirer la sappate don!” – what man? I’ll hit you with the slipper, man! These Tamil-French creolised fragments were the bird’s entire repertoire.

After the Second World War, another wave of French voices filled the streets. Soldiers who had fought in Europe and Indochina returned to Pondicherry to enjoy their retirement. These soldats brought with them new words and songs from the trenches, and a melancholic elegance. Alongside them were French Tamilians who had served in the colonial empire’s civil service: administrators, teachers, clerks and officials who had worked in Indochina, West Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific.

At Goubert Bazar, from the butchers honing their knives to the flower sellers with jasmine and marigolds, everyone haggled using whatever French they knew. A military veteran or former public servant might gesture towards a piece of meat, saying “Un peu plus, mon ami”, and the butcher, seamlessly blending Tamil and French, would reply, “Sari Missié!” This is a fusion of the Tamil phrase “Sari”, meaning “okay” or “fine”, and the French title “Monsieur.”

Kel’nna and her children, Velankanni, as well as the returning veterans embodied the very essence of French culture in Pondicherry, a culture that permeated the fabric of daily life.

A French-Tamil heritage

I was born in Antananarivo, Madagascar, to a Malagasy mother and a Tamil father. However, it was in the narrow streets of Kurussukupam – a vibrant fisherman, Dalit and Bas Créole neighborhood – that I came of age. On the thinnai, the Tamil-style veranda that opens to the street, I would listen to people effortlessly switching between Tamil and French.

There, I realised that French in Pondicherry is a living memory, a bridge connecting two oceans, and a legacy that has shaped the soul of this part of India for over three centuries.

The French presence in India dates back to 1674, when François Martin, the governor of the French East India Company, founded Pondicherry on a lagoon bordered by coconut palms. In this hub of cultural exchange, Tamil merchants, Armenian brokers, African soldiers, Jesuit missionaries and French administrators all coexisted. French transcended its role as a language of bureaucracy and business.

The historic educational institutions established by the French – most notably, the Lycée Français de Pondichéry, which will celebrate two hundred years in October – taught grammar, literature but also a way of seeing the world. Students absorbed the words of Voltaire, Victor Hugo, and Aimé Césaire, and also a cultural temperament that valued reason without rejecting dreams.

The area known as “White Town” in Pondicherry, with its elegant colonial mansions adorned with blue shutters and ocher walls, is a testament to the rich history of “métissage” – cultural mix.

Pondicherry’s inhabitants blended French with their culture, creating a unique, creole identity. This gave birth to two distinct creole communities: the haut créoles (high creoles) and the bas créoles (low creoles).

The haut créoles, descendants of the first French colonists, traced their ancestry to Europe and lived in the grand mansions of White Town. They cultivated a French close to the standard spoken in Paris. The bas creoles emerged from mixed marriages between Europeans, Tamils, and other Asian communities over the centuries. They lived in humble quarters near fishing villages or in lower-caste neighborhoods, and embodied the most vibrant and earthy expression of cultural fusion.

The bas créole of Pondicherry speak a living, hybrid language: French vocabulary richly compounded with Tamil words, syntax, and rhythms, sometimes laced with Portuguese echoes from even earlier encounters. This Creole has a Tamil accent and a melodic flow, transforming formal French into a distinctly local idiom.

In Pondicherry, French fostered a distinct Indo-French literary tradition, where Tamil Thirukkural poems engaged in dialogue with the alexandrines of Racine. French hymns rang out in the churches, Tamil bhajans filled the temples, and Urdu prayers rose from the mosque.

The French language has provided Pondicherry’s inhabitants, the children of autorickshaw drivers and educators alike, access to French universities and the libraries of Paris, as well as to intellectual movements across the Francophone world. It has served as a unifying force, connecting Pondicherry to countries such as Senegal, Vietnam, the Caribbean, and the Indian Ocean, forming bonds of solidarity.

French culture nurtured a unique artistic sensibility, visible in the manicured gardens lining the Promenade, the symmetrical design of the streets, the love of literature and lengthy discussions over coffee, and the cuisine that blends French culinary skills with Tamil flavour.

I tried to encapsulate and honour this cultural melding in my book Le Thinnai. The novel centres the hybrid world of Bas Créole and Dalit characters that earlier literature had often overlooked or marginalised. The thinnai, with its history of cultural crossroads and intermingling, becomes the architectural and metaphorical core of a narrative that resists any single tradition taking center stage.

As a writer who expresses myself in French, Tamil, English, and Norwegian, I carry these layers within me. It remains essential for writers, like myself, to continue writing in French, which allowed me to tell stories that neither Tamil nor English alone could fully capture. The era decolonisation has not meant cutting the deep ties that the French had woven into our soil, but caring for them as our own.

French offers the exact tool needed to create hybrid music blending bas creole rhythms with Tamil and the intimate fusion of Tamil cadence and Gallic clarity. It allows us to speak simultaneously to our ancestors in White Town and to the bas créole voices still rising from the markets, while reaching the larger Francophone family across oceans.

To forsake French would be to muzzle one of India’s most distinctive literary voices, nurtured by centuries of interaction instead of forced assimilation. By choosing to write in French, we affirm that Pondicherry’s creolised identity is a living inheritance to be nurtured.

Losing this linguistic heritage will erase a part of Pondicherry’s collective memory as a living museum of human encounters. As long as the sea kisses the shores of Pondicherry, we shall sing in creolised French in the open thinnai where the world is invited to listen and belong.

Ari Gautier is a French-indo-malagasy writer and poet.