Book review of “The Last Post: Inscriptions on French Graves in India by K.J.S. Chatrath" by Dr. Rosie Llellwyn Jones*

 

                                                               Dr. Rosie Llellwyn Jones

 “The Last Post: Inscriptions on French Graves in India”

 by K.J.S. Chatrath

Book review by Dr. Rosie Llellwyn Jones*

There is no equivalent association to BACSA in France, but after reading this book French people may well be moved to set up a similarorganisation. The author, a retired IAS officer, has published a number of books on Franco-Indian topics and was inspired to write this delightful book after a visit to the French cemetery in Pondicherry,some two decades ago.

France was the most serious rival to Britain in the eighteenth-century struggle for domination in India. Had the Comte de Lally not surrendered Pondicherry in 1761 after a British siege that lasted nearly a year, and had that fine General, Joseph Francois Dupleix received proper support from his homeland, India would today be a Francophone country. Perhaps, because their country ultimately lost the battle for control, the French have always had a different relationship with India to the British. It is a softer relationship, more romantic, more cultural, and somehow more intuitive. Freed from the possibility of actually having to run the country, France began to explore it in ways that the British could not do. And yet there has been little written in English, about the French role in India. Almost single-handedly Professor Jean-Marie Lafont has explored the French contribution in a number of books including lndika; Essays in Inda- French Relations 1630-1976, published in 2000, but little else has appeared.

All the more reason then to welcome Dr Chatrath 's book, which is both a straightforward listing of French graves in five cities -Chandernagore, Karaikal, Pondicherry, Mahe and Yanam and a learned look at other French graves in India. Theon Wilkinson's book Two Monsoons, the inspiration for BACSA, is given full credit as the first book of its kind to go ' beyond the mere listing of the graves and the epitaphs'. The long introductory chapter in The Last Post is similarly discursive, opinionated and readable. The oldest French grave found is that of Jacques L'Huyer, who may have come from Dunquerque. He died after a long illness, borne with much patience, and after having been received into the Church, on 24 August 1703 at Pondicherry

Under the heading 'Inscriptions brimming with Agony and Sorrow ' is the wording on the Chandemagore tomb of a baby of five months, Alfred Sylvain. He was the son of Alfred Hilleau de St Hillaire,Chevalier of the Royal Order of the Legion d'Honneur, Administrator of the French Settlements in Bengal , and his wife Adele Hyacinthe Marie, Duchess of Villeneuve. The little boy died on 4 May 1843. 'Oh Mothers! Shed a tear for this angel'. The loss of this child must have been particularly hard for his father, who would have been an elderly man at the time of the birth, because the term 'Royal Order ' was abolished by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1802.

A similarly sad story is related on a Pondicherry tombstone to the Vardon family, who lostthree children in three years after the early death of their mother. 'What happened to these children?' asks the author 'What ailments did they suffer from? What a catastrophe it would have been for the parents.'

Well known French people who died in India are also noted – the botanist Victor Jacquemont who died in Bombay on 7 December 1832 and whose large botanical collection is preserved in the Natural History Museum in Paris; Jean Baptiste De Warren , the astronomer who was appointed Judge at Pondicherry, where he died in 1830; General Michel Joachim Marie Raymond , who died in Hyderabad in 1798 and the Frenchmen who worked for Maharaja Ranjit Singh, like Jean-Francois Allard who is buried in Lahore next to his daughter Marie-Charlotte .

'Where are the bad people buried?' is another endearing heading. 'Have you come across a single inscription ... where any negative quality of the deceased was mentioned or even hinted at?' After much searching Dr Chatrath found the tomb of Josephe Rondo , born near Nantes in 1767 and died in Chandemagore on 13 November 1846. His inscription reads: 'He had the virtues but those could not erase his faults, which he tried to correct instead of hiding them. '

The author tells us how he himself nearly came to a sticky end in the Pondicherry cemetery , when a long-homed cow charged him - 'my reflexes were rather quick for a sixty-plus man ' he says modestly. And what a good thing too, otherwise we would have been deprived of this splendid work. All right, there are one or two niggles - it could have been better proof -read; some of the French transcriptions are a bit doubtful, and by some computer quirk there are no grave or acute accents (which will really wind French readers up), but it is a thoroughly recommended book. (RLJ).*Rosie Llellwyn Jones

 https://himalaya.socanth.cam.ac.uk/collections/journals/chowkidar/pdf/chowkidar_12_06.pdf

*Dr Rosie Llewellyn-Jones MBE is a well-known British scholar with an expertise on Lucknow and its culture. Based in London, where she worked for the Royal Society for Asian Affairs, Llewellyn-Jones is a regular visitor to Lucknow and has authored several books on the city. She holds a degree in Urdu from SOAS University of London. A renowned historian of colonial India, she is Editor of Chowkidar, the journal of the British Association for Cemeteries in South Asia. Her books include The Last King in India, also published by Hurst, and Lucknow 1857.

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2010 Pothi.com - No ISBN. Rs 800 with black & white photographs, or Rs 2,750 with colour photographs.

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