Sikh history in French Riviera

Sarika Sharma

He gave orders in French, but learnt Punjabi to talk to his soldiers. He married a Hindu princess from the Chamba hills, but sent her to France for he feared she would commit Sati if he died in the battlefield. He settled her in St Tropez, but told his kids to not talk in French, but their mother tongue. Punjab was his karmbhoomi and he was Punjab’s last Sikh Maharaja, Ranjit Singh’s first firang general. General Jean François Allard’s great grandson Henri Prevost Allard wants this connection to be celebrated, both here and at St Tropez city in France.

Henri, deputy mayor of St Tropez, who is also in charge of tourism, and Ranjit G Singh, a representative of the Sikh Council of France, spent the last week meeting officials and ministers, including the chief minister, in Punjab to discuss the possibility of a celebration in the French Riviera next summer.

St Tropez is sparsely populated but turns into a busy seaside resort in summer with the number of inhabitants swelling to 60,000 from 6,000 in winter. A place famously frequented by the American and European jet set, it is known for both its “culture fix” and “fun in the sun”. A quiet municipal park here celebrates its 200-year-old link with Punjab. For, here lie the busts of Maharaja Ranjit Singh, along with those of his wife Bannu Pan Dei and General Allard. The Sikh maharaja’s bust was gifted to the town by the Punjab Government in 2016.

Maharaja Ranjit Singh’s army was an amalgamation of generals from various countries. Of them, Allard, who had worked in Napoleon’s army, was the most trusted. He raised the Fauj-i-Khas, a model brigade on the lines of Napoleon’s army, for the last Sikh maharaja. The brigade won them the first Anglo-Sikh war. Henri, who has authored a book on his great grandfather, says General Allard and the maharaja became really thick friends. The maharaja asked Allard to learn Punjabi to be able to speak not just to him, but to the soldiers as well. However, the orders in Fauj-i-Khas were always given in French, a tactic that helped them during battles, the major ones being fought between the Afghans and the Sikhs at the Khyber Pass in Afghanistan.

But Punjab’s connect with St Tropez doesn’t just begin and end with General Allard. Maharaja Ranjit Singh had got the mercenary married to a princess from Chamba, Bannu Pan Deï, in 1822. The couple had seven children together, of whom five survived. HP Allard is a descendent. He says Maharaja Ranjit Singh wanted the general to have a strong bond with the country and arranged the match. The couple spent a few years together here, after which something forced Allard to send her to France. “One day, he saw a woman jump into the pyre of one of his colleagues who had died during a war. He feared Pan Deï would be obliged to commit Sati if he dies in the battlefield too. He did not want her to meet the same fate and decided to take her to France,” tells Henri. The family made the journey to France in 1835.

Henri says the general returned in January 1837 and brought along with him guns, swords, ammunition, metal jackets, cannon models among other things. He died in Peshawar in January 1839 owing to a kidney ailment. Pan Dei was to know of it only four months later. She announced: “I will join him after my death.”

Pan Deï and Allard’s wedding was solemnised to bolster the latter’s relationship with Punjab and Henri says it did exactly that. “General Allard asked her to learn French to maintain the privacy of communication. And when she wrote to him, he asked her to write in Persian. He also asked his children to speak in Persian and Punjabi because French was not their mother tongue,” he told them. After his death, Pan Deï converted to Christianity. Ranjit says it was probably her way of realising Sati.

Pan Dei Palais, their residence, is an ode to their love story. The 12-room house is now a boutique hotel, often frequented by tourists who gush over their love story. The Allard family doesn’t own the palace any longer. However, Henri and Ranjit want common Punjabis, who visit France so often, to know of this link and celebrate it. “An annual summer festival around the death anniversary of Maharaja Ranjit Singh could be a beginning,” they suggest.

The other generals

General Allard wasn’t the only foreign general around in those days. Lt-Gen Baljit Singh (retd) says Maharaja Ranjit Singh’s army alone had two more Frenchmen and an Italian general working for him. Of these, the latter, Jean Baptiste Ventura, was one of the most influential. He says many generals from Napoleon’s army landed in India at the time when the Sikh maharaja was consolidating power. Maj-Gen Raj Mehta, chief mentor, Sarthi Museum Consultant, Mohali, says the most famous foreign general in South India would undoubtedly be Eustace D’ Lannoy, a Dutch general. Admiral of the Dutch kingdom, he was captured by Maharaja of Travancore, Marthanda Varma, during a battle at Colachel near Kanyakumari. D’ Lannoy offered to serve him and modernised the Travancore Army. When he died, the whole of Kerala wept. He and his family are buried in Fort Colachel. D’ Lannoy is sometimes called the father of Indian Army.