The Birth, Life, and Death of Racial Segregation in Pondicherry — and the Auroville Transformation
Phase I: Drawing the Line (17th–18th century)
Segregation without saying the word
When the French East India Company established Pondicherry in the late 17th century, it did something subtle but decisive: it drew lines without naming them racial.
By the early 1700s, the town was formally divided into two urban zones:
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Ville Blanche (White Town) — the administrative, commercial, and European quarter
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Ville Noire (Black Town) — the Indian residential and artisanal quarter
No law ever declared: “Indians shall not live in White Town.”
Instead, segregation was born through urban planning ordinances.
A typical municipal regulation (18th century, paraphrased from French council records) stated:
“All houses within the central town shall be constructed of brick or stone, with tiled roofs, aligned to approved street plans, and maintained in accordance with sanitary norms.”
This sounds neutral. It was not.
Brick construction, tiled roofing, drainage compliance, and alignment permits were expensive, bureaucratic, and discretionary. Most Indians could not comply — not because they were prohibited, but because they were priced out and policed out.
Segregation was thus embedded in infrastructure, not statute.
Phase II: Maintaining the Divide (18th–19th century)
Bureaucracy as racial technology
French colonial ideology rested on universalism:
“Any man, regardless of origin, may become French.”
A racial law would have contradicted this.
So segregation was maintained through status, permits, and selective enforcement.
1. Legal status mattered more than race — on paper
Colonial society distinguished between:
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Citoyens français (French citizens)
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Sujets (colonial subjects)
Most Indians were sujets.
Only a small class — merchants, interpreters (dubashes), Christian converts, and French-educated elites — could apply for enhanced legal standing.
An administrative note from the 19th century (reconstructed from council correspondence) captures the logic:
“Residence in the European town requires persons of proper conduct, means, and education, capable of maintaining public order and hygiene.”
Again, no race is mentioned.
Yet everyone knew what “proper conduct” implied.
2. Policing and sanitation as tools of exclusion
Sanitation ordinances allowed authorities to:
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Inspect homes
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Declare buildings “unsafe”
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Evict residents for overcrowding or fire risk
These rules were applied asymmetrically.
Indian residents in White Town were far more likely to be cited, fined, or removed. Europeans almost never were.
Segregation was not a wall — it was constant pressure.
Phase III: Cracks in the System (late 19th–early 20th century)
When exceptions multiply, rules weaken
By the late 1800s, the system began to strain.
Wealthy Indian merchants acquired property in White Town.
Lawyers, doctors, printers, and teachers followed.
The presence of Indians was no longer exceptional — but it remained conditional.
An anecdote from Pondicherry municipal debates (early 20th century) recounts an official complaint that:
“The European quarter increasingly resembles the native town in character.”
This was not about race alone — it was about loss of control.
Sri Aurobindo enters the picture (1910)
When Sri Aurobindo arrived in Pondicherry in 1910, he did so not as a privileged insider, but as a political refugee.
British India wanted him watched, if not imprisoned.
French India offered legal distance.
He settled in what was administratively White Town — not because it was racially exclusive, but because:
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It was the urban core
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It offered privacy, infrastructure, and legal protection
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It was where rented houses were available for long-term residence
The irony is striking:
A man fleeing colonial repression lived inside a colonial city’s most “European” space — while philosophically dismantling all hierarchies from within.
Phase IV: The Quiet Death of Segregation (1940s–1960s)
When the law changes by becoming irrelevant
Segregation in Pondicherry did not end with a proclamation.
It died of obsolescence.
Key moments:
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1947: Indian independence alters the moral landscape
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1954: De facto transfer of French territories to India
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1962: De jure merger completed
With this, colonial legal categories collapsed:
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Citoyen vs sujet disappeared
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Permit regimes lost meaning
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Property laws were equalised
No one repealed a segregation law — because none formally existed.
White Town simply became:
The French Quarter — a heritage space, not a racial one.
The line that once mattered dissolved into memory.
Phase V: Auroville — Not Integration, but Transformation (1968– )
From regulated coexistence to chosen unity
If White Town represents colonial integration under control,
Auroville represents something entirely different.
Founded in 1968, Auroville was conceived not as a town, but as an experiment.
Mirra Alfassa (The Mother) articulated its premise clearly:
“Auroville belongs to nobody in particular.
Auroville belongs to humanity as a whole.”
This was not the French universalism of permits and compliance.
This was post-national belonging.
How Auroville inverted the colonial model
| Colonial Pondicherry | Auroville |
|---|---|
| Entry by permission | Entry by aspiration |
| Identity filtered | Identity bracketed |
| Space controlled | Space co-created |
| Power centralised | Power distributed |
| Integration conditional | Integration intentional |
There are no “European quarters” or “native towns” in Auroville.
There are only zones of function and communities of practice.
Conflicts exist — over land, labour, language — but not as racial architecture.
That alone marks a civilisational shift.
Phase VI: Continuity, Not Rupture
Why Auroville could only emerge here
Auroville did not arise despite Pondicherry’s history — but because of it.
Pondicherry had already:
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Lived with multiple legal systems
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Hosted political refugees
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Normalised cultural pluralism
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Seen segregation collapse without violence
White Town trained the city in living with difference under constraint.
Auroville asked whether difference could live without constraint.
Conclusion: From Lines on Maps to Lines of Flight
The story of Pondicherry is not one of sudden moral awakening.
It is the story of:
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How segregation can exist without laws
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How it can persist without declarations
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And how it can die without repeal
And then — how a radically different imagination of human living can take root in the same soil.
White Town drew lines to separate.
Auroville draws circles to include.
Between them lies not just history — but a lesson:
The most enduring forms of segregation are administrative.
The most radical forms of integration are voluntary.
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