Jessica Namakkal. Unsettling Utopia: The Making and Unmaking of French India.

Abstract

Jessica Namakkal’s book, Unsettling Utopia, is a fascinating study of how the “messiness of colonialism” can be demonstrated in the complex realities of decolonized nations like India. Namakkal focusses on Pondicherry and its surrounding areas, as an example of how different colonial empires (Pondicherry was a French colony, while India was largely a British colony) and their policies created complex and often contradictory webs of bureaucracy, paperwork, laws, borders, and cultures. This complex legacy continues today, where past and present live in tenuous coexistence and differences often flare into conflict. The first section of the book, titled “Making” describes how the interaction between French and British colonial regimes in the context of Pondicherry led to convoluted borders, which, depending on one’s point of view, can be seen as either shutting in or shutting out the other. As a consequence of these borders and as a result of France’s aim of showcasing her possessions in India as “model colonies” in contrast to the increasing resistance in the rest of India to British rule, Pondicherry became a haven for exiles from British India. The most famous of these was Sri Aurobindo, who, as a British Indian subject with an elite education, could easily mingle with French colonial administrators while garnering the local population’s support for his mission. In consequence, Aurobindo went on to attract a number of European and American devotees to his ashram, which he established along with his foremost disciple, Mira Alfassa, a Frenchwoman who would come to be known as “The Mother,” and become Aurobindo’s successor.