Avenue Goubert

The Coromandel Coast gave French Pondicherry its worst problem: there is no natural harbour. This is a treacherous lee shore, heavy with surf and sand bars. Ships anchored offshore for three centuries and goods were transferred by small boat in conditions that regularly cost lives. The French built a pier, which gave some protection but never resolved the fundamental problem. It eventually collapsed. So the promenade became the face of the city instead: the boulevard where the colonial administration placed its most important monuments, where citizens promenaded in the French manner, and where the White Town's ordered grid met the open sea.

Walking south along Goubert Avenue from the northern end is to walk through three centuries in fifteen minutes. The French War Memorial comes first: it commemorates the Pondicherrians who died fighting for France in the First and Second World Wars. The French Consulate maintains it and holds an Armistice Day ceremony here every 11 November. Then the Dupleix statue: bronze, high pedestal, facing the sea toward France and disgrace. Further along, the Gandhi statue, claimed to be among the tallest bronze Gandhi statues in the world. Then the Nehru statue. The Old Lighthouse, mid-nineteenth century and no longer active, still stands on the seafront. Le Café, run by the Sri Aurobindo Ashram, occupies a prime position overlooking the Bay. At the southern end, Raj Nivas, the official residence of the Lieutenant Governor, was built in 1738 by Governor Dumas as the French Governor's residence. It has been in continuous official use since then.

The avenue is named after Édouard Goubert (1894-1974), the physician and political boss who dominated Pondicherry in the decade before the transfer. In October 1948 his party won 102 of 102 seats in the municipal elections: a fraud so blatant that India used it to repudiate the agreed referendum framework. No plebiscite on Pondicherry's future was ever held. Then, in March 1954, Goubert switched sides and declared for India. His defection broke the pro-French faction. The de facto transfer followed on 1 November 1954. The most French-feeling boulevard in the city is named after the man who gave it to India.