Sacred Heart Basilica — Pondicherry

France shipped 28 stained-glass windows from a factory in France to a tropical Indian city, not because it made practical sense, but because it was a statement. Built 1902–1907, consecrated on 17 December 1907, this basilica says: we are permanent.

The ambition. By 1902 the French Catholic mission in Pondicherry was two centuries old and confident. The early Capuchin missionaries had built modest coral-stone chapels. Their successors built this: a full Neo-Gothic basilica, 50 metres long, 48 wide, 18 high, on 24 massive pillars (capacity 2,000). Architect Télesphore Welter reached for the most expensive, most explicitly European style available; construction was overseen by Fr. Fourcaud.

The Paris connection. The comparison with Sacré-Cœur in Paris is not accidental. Both were built in the same generation, in the same style, as acts of French Catholic confidence after national trauma. Paris's Sacré-Cœur began in 1875 after the Franco-Prussian War. Pondicherry's answer, in a colonial city that had survived four British occupations, followed the same logic: build in stone what politics cannot undo. Above the entrance, a Latin inscription from 2 Chronicles 7:16: My eyes and my heart will always be there.

The glass. The 28 stained-glass panels were manufactured in France and shipped here, depicting saints associated with the Sacred Heart devotion. In a city built from local coral stone, they are the most explicitly imported objects in any building.