Illegal aliens

It’s always dangerous to draw too many generalised conclusions from odd snatches of conversation but I couldn’t help thinking that there is a rising sense of nationalism in India. In particular, in southern India there was overt antipathy towards their fairer skinned brethren of Indian-Aryan ancestry, characterised as invaders from Afghanistan, and criticism was directed at the hitherto sainted Mahatma Gandhi for vacillating on the Moslem question. With Moslem birth rates far outstripping those of other religious communities there is a heightening of tensions that have always lurked beneath the surface. It would be a shame if they erupted into violence but it was hardly coincidental that religious tensions had erupted again in nearby Sri Lanka at the time of our visit.

Foreigners have been part of the landscape on the sub-continent for centuries and it was appropriate that our tour began at the coastal city of Chennai (Madras in old money) which was the site of the first manifestation of permanent British presence in the area. The East India Company bought a strip of coastal land called Chennirayarpattinam and proceeded to build a fort there, to better protect the harbour and their trading activities. Completed on 23^rd April 1644 it was christened Fort St George and over time was developed into an impressive fortification with thick walls some 20 feet high.

Notwithstanding its ramparts and large garrison, it fell into French hands between 1746 and 1749, eventually being restored to the Brits following the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle. Today it is the administrative headquarters of the Tamil Nadu state government and is the garrison to some Indian troops. There is a museum which houses relics from the British occupation – worth a visit, although the curatorship is distinctly 1950s – and the church, St Mary’s, is the oldest Anglican one in India. Built between 1678 and 1680 it was where the nabobest of nabobs, Robert Clive, was married and its graveyard contains the oldest British tombstones on the sub-continent.

Despite the maps of the British Empire I pored over when I was a schoolboy, India wasn’t entirely red. Pondicherry was and is still distinctly French. The French East India Company established their headquarters there in 1674 and the area was fought over incessantly over the next two centuries by those implacable enemies, the French and British. When the British finally took control over all of India in the late 1850s, they rather magnanimously allowed the French to remain there and, oddly, even beyond Indian independence the area around Pondicherry was under French control. It was not until 1st November 1954 that it was incorporated into the Indian state.

Pondicherry has a very distinctive European feel with a broad promenade along the shoreline which boasted a pier until it collapsed in 1953 – this may have presaged the departure of the French – and a series of four broad boulevards running parallel in what is known as White Town. Even the local police sport jaunty red caps a la gendarmerie. The cathedral is a mini version of the Notre Dame and as the congregation dispersed we were mobbed by groups requesting us to pose for photos with them. We never did find out why!

Less welcoming to the Brits was Tipu Sultan, who along with his dad, Hyder Ali, did not quite see the benefits of being absorbed into the domains controlled by the East India Company. In all, the Brits fought four wars between 1767 and 1799 against these two, before finally winning a decisive victory at the Siege of Srirangapatna, during the course of which Tipu was killed. We saw the spot where he died. Tipu’s major military innovation was the use of rocket-propelled artillery, the like of which the Brits had not encountered before. However, sheer weight of numbers and Tipu’s folly of pissing off his wife, who then sided against him, and of relying on the French saw the Brits ultimately prevail.