Down Comes the Tricolor

After 290 rich colonial years, the "French presence" in India came to an end. Pondicherry and three other small enclaves ("pimples on the face of India" Jawaharlal Nehru had once called them) were turned over to India, in accordance with the recent agreement between Nehru and Pierre Mendes-Fraance. Thus India effortlessly picked up 193 square miles of territory and 320,000 new citizens. The reek of gunpowder attended the takeover, but it came from joyfully exploding fireworks.

Not everybody was happy. When the time came last week to lower France's tricolor, sullen French officials did it surreptitiously, to foil eager Indian photographers. Pondicherry had been widely known as a "goodtime town" and a smuggler's paradise (less than 1% of the millions of dollars worth of watches, silks and other luxury goods imported into Pondicherry went to its local citizens). Last week elderly, solemn Indian officials moved into choice hotel rooms previously used as brothels. One disgruntled hotelman pointed to a big stack of empty whisky bottles beside his back veranda and sighed: "That is a sight that Pondicherry will not again see."

Now that the French were leaving quietly, the Indians felt a little more kindly towards them, and even placed a wreath at the foot of a statue to France's great colonial conqueror, General Joseph Franc,ois Dupleix.

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