“The reunion will be their true country, where they won’t feel like strangers. They’ve never been where they were before: black Europeans in Vietnam, fake Indians in India, too colorful in Metropolitan France, at least that’s what i father is sure and will tell him too black,” wrote Sandjiv Sandjiv in the epilogue of a story, published in 2021, titled “Pondicherry – Saigon – Reunion Island” by Net edition. what this mathematics professor said was about his family and, more especially, about his father, Honoré Sandjivy.

In 1673, the French East India Company was granted a coastal village in southeastern India. Quickly, the city became a major port, at a time when Europeans were establishing their counters in Asia, mainly because of its strategic position on the spice route. In the 19th century, counter residents had the possibility to choose French citizenship, as was the case for the Sandjivy family. But by the end of the century, France’s desire for expansion in Asia was focused entirely on Indochina. Naturalized, the Sandjivy family’s ancestors left there to work in the civil service and it was in Saigon that Honoré was born in 1923.

USE IN METROPOLIS

In French Indochina, the naturalized French Indians represented a kind of intermediate category between Europeans and indigenous peoples. They were citizens, enjoyed political rights and had access to French schools and civil service positions while living far from Europeans who sometimes looked at them with disdain. After graduating high school…