The Cultural Impact of The Colonial French Empire in Puducherry: A Select Reading

Abstract

Colonization has brought many cultural changes among the colonized. The colonized glorifiedthe colonizers as master of ‘civilization’ and ‘cultured’ lifestyle. This made the colonized to copythe trends of the colonizers more enthusiastically by demeaning the colonized culture. After the emergence of postcolonial thinking, the colonized are trying to set back their route to their own culture andvalues. Though they aspired or not the colonizer’s culture became part of the colonized too asthey lived together for some centuries. The paper, therefore, focuses on how the natives ofPuducherry got along with the colonizers. It also attempts to study the dual mindset of thecolonized on accepting and rejecting the colonial culture; whereas the byproduct might be themixture of Indo-French culture in Puducherry. The study uses both fiction and non-fiction ofPuducherry writers, which include Ananda Ranga Pillai’s The Private Diaries of Ananda Ranga Pillai, Prapanchan’sBeyond the Sky, P. Raja’s short story collections, Blood and Other Storiesand My Father’s Bicycle and Imayam’sArumugam.