Few people are aware that in the eighteenth century, India almost became a French rather than British territory. Fewer know that France nevertheless managed to retain a foothold in the subcontinent throughout the raj. They are surprised to discover that French India survived for a full fifteen years after the Union Jack was lowered in Delhi. And they are amazed to find out that, as a legacy of France’s colonial rule in India, there remain today scattered throughout the Union Territory of Pondicherry, thousands of ethnic Indians who nevertheless retain French citizenship.

   Older Frenchmen recognize -- even better than most Indian students and adults do -- the places named Karikal, Mahe, and Yanam. These small settlements, along with the larger and better-known towns of Pondicherry and Chandernagore, constituted the five comptoirs or establishments of French India. Today, these specks of former French India (with the exception of Chandernagore) constitute the Union Territory of Pondicherry. Only colonial history can explain why such small pieces of territory, which otherwise would be part of the states of Tamil Nadu, Kerala, and Andhra Pradesh, are administratively united.

  In 1954, after a local vote carried out under dubious circumstances, France physically withdrew from her four remaining establishments in India. (She had already ceded Chandernagore under more amicable terms in 1949.) Between 1954 and 1962, former French India subsisted in juridical limbo. Though administered by the Indian government, France retained a legal fiction of sovereignty. This ambiguous position came to an end in 1962 when the government of France ratified a 1956 treaty with India relinquishing all territorial claims. As a result of this treaty, however, the constituent parts of former French India were to remain united as a single administrative unit within the Union of India.

  An even more intriguing part of that Treaty of Cession stipulated that inhabitants of the former French establishments could opt to retain French citizenship. Relatively few of the inhabitants of French India did so and today they and their dependents and offspring number perhaps twenty-five thousand. Many of these are recipients (particularly as army veterans) of pensions and other French government transfer payments. France’s mode of decolonization in India created a countercolonial situation in which the former colonizer pays a much higher price today than do the formerly colonized. The ensuing complications run the gamut from education to economics, from nationality to neo-colonialism, and from politics to procreation.

  One such legacy is the maintenance of different French language school systems, catering to ethnic Indians on Indian soil. The systems are maintained by the Indian government (through the union territory budget), private religious institutions (mostly Catholic), and the French government (through the ministry of foreign affairs). But what can one do with a French language diploma in India? French language education results in migration to France, a fairly easy prospect for those holding French citizenship but a great difficulty for those without it. (The Indian government does not recognize dual citizenship.) French colonialism in India has created one of South Asia’s most fascinating political subcultures.

Editor’s Note: William Miles, Ph.D., is the author of “Imperial Burdens: Countercolonialism in Former French India.” He teaches political science at Boston’s Northeastern University.