An Indian city holds its French flavor

On a Sunday evening at the Notre Dame des Anges church, the strings of jasmine festooning the pedestals of Mary and Jesus and the dark-skinned female parishioners wearing saris suggest a firm foot in India. That is, until the priest says mass in French.

The French may have left Pondicherry, their tiny bastion in British India, 51 years ago, but this city in Southeastern India has preserved what they left behind.

Signs of France can been seen immediately in the more than 270 heritage buildings that stand in the colonial quarter of the city. "Nowhere else in India can you see in one section of a city such a large number of well-preserved colonial buildings," says Venkataramaya Nallam, president of Pondicherry's historical society.

While India worked furiously to dismantle links to Britain after gaining independence in 1947, Pondicherry has held dearly to French names and institutions. Residents don't appear to harbor resentment toward the French, and that has aided the city's preservation efforts, Dr. Nallam says. "We never had any bitterness against the French colonials," he explains. "The kind of oppression in British India was not felt here."

Unlike British India, Pondicherry became independent without bloodshed. The city also had served as a haven for Indian revolutionaries fleeing British rule. One such revolutionary, Aurobindo Ghosh, gave up his incendiary activities upon arrival in Pondicherry and started a small ashram in the quarter where the French lived. Over the years, the ashram grew into an enormous entity that bought up many of the surrounding colonial buildings to accommodate its members and programs. Residents credit Aurobindo Ashram with being the forerunner, albeit unintentionally, of Pondicherry's preservation effort. "The best preserved part of the [colonial quarter] is around the ashram," says Ajit Koujalgi, a senior architect at the Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage in Pondicherry.

In addition, Pondicherry's union territory status, similar to a city state, has helped the preservation effort, especially when government cooperation is required. "Because it's small, there's much less bureaucracy," says local architect Arul Arjunan.

Apart from buildings, the use of the French language has also been preserved in the city. Most street signs are bilingual, written in French and Tamil.

The local French high school has played a large role in keeping the language alive. The school, supported by the French government, has about 1,000 students ages 3 to 18 who are educated completely in the French system. Some 80 percent of the students are French citizens. They gained that status from their parents who opted for French citizenship at the time Pondicherry was handed over to India.

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