What comes to mind when you think of Puducherry? A tranquil weekend getaway… a coastal town…and a unique French influence. It is a well-known fact that Puducherry was colonized by the French for almost 300 years. It is perhaps less known, that the first French Governor-General of Puducherry, called Joseph Francois Dupleix (in office from 1742-1754), married a woman from Puducherry. While the whole town was segregated between a “black town” and “white town” as it was then still called (it is now referred to as the Heritage and French town), Joseph Dupleix married a woman who was born in Pondicherry and who was of mixed lineage.
Jeanne Dupleix, or Joanna Begum (as she was referred to by Indians), was a mysterious figure in many ways, and it is not clear how Joseph and her met and decided to get married. Not only was she of mixed lineage and married to a French man during a time of segregation, she was also previously married to another man (a Mr. Vincent, who was a good friend of Joseph Dupleix’s) and had 11 children before she married Dupleix! Tragically, their only child together, also called Joseph, died the first day he was born.
.Jeanne got married to Dupleix in 1741, just one year before he came into power. She became his political advisor, and was known to have influenced her husband’s political trajectory. She was particularly known to push his non-Christian policies and had a reputation of being ‘a pupil of the devil’ for her extremely vicious prosecution of Hindus and Muslims alike.
But after having lived a life of power in Puducherry, Joseph Dupleix himself moved back to France and died there impoverished. There is a lot that remains a mystery in their story, such as whether they had a happy marriage, how others in Dupleix’s circle treated Jeanne, whether Jeanne ended up going back to France with Joseph, what happened to her children, and how they fell from such power to a life of poverty.
–By Ayesha Kapur