The French India Socialist Party was a political party in French India

French India

French India is a general name for the former French possessions in India These included Pondichéry , Karikal and Yanaon on the Coromandel Coast, Mahé on the Malabar Coast, and Chandannagar in Bengal...

. The party was led by Edouard Goubert

Edouard Goubert

Clemencedu Edouard Goubert was former mayor and first chief minister of Pondichéry between July 1, 1963 - September 11, 1964...

, Minister for General Administration for French India. The party played a dominant role in the political life in the colony, being backed by the French administration. The party favoured retaining links with France, but would eventually turn against French rule.

Founding

The party was founded in July 1947, after a split in the National Democratic Front

National Democratic Front (French India)

The National Democratic Front was a political coalition in French India. The movement dominated the political scene in the colony for a brief period until the emergence of a split between the socialists and communists in the coalition....

. The Socialist Party was founded by Edouard Goubert

Edouard Goubert

Clemencedu Edouard Goubert was former mayor and first chief minister of Pondichéry between July 1, 1963 - September 11, 1964...

, P. Counouma and Lambert Saravane. The party was able to gain strong support from anti-communist urban middle-class Pondycherrites, who were opposed to the Communist Party

Communist Party of French India

The Communist Party of French India was a political party in French India. V. Subbiah was the secretary of the party.-World War and the National Democratic Front:...

 leader V. Subbiah

V. Subbiah

V. Subbiah was an Indian communist politician from Pondicherry . Subbiah was the secretary of the Communist Party of French India. He is regarded as the founder of the trade union movement in the union territory...

.

Role in Pondicherry politics

The new party quickly gained the support of the French colonial administration. Under Goubert's leadership, the French India Socialist Party avoided to take any clear position on the issue of merger with the Indian Union claiming that such a question was up to the people of the colony to decide.

The party fielded candidates for all of the 102 seats in the Pondicherry district for the August 1948 municipal polls. The elections were reportedly heavily rigged in Goubert's favour. All 102 French India Socialist Party candidates emerged victorious.

The pro-Merger parties boycotted the December 16, 1951 general and municipal polls, and thus the elections were easily won by the French India Socialist Party. Goubert continued as the Minister for General Administration.

Turn towards Merger

Goubert had established a vast smuggling enterprise in Pondicherry, a fact that was well-known at the time. On March 6, 1954 French authorities charged Goubert with fiscal fraud. Other Socialist Party leaders were booked under corruption charges as well. Rapidly the relations between the colonial administration and the Socialist Party went sour. Politically, the French India Socialist Party made a sharp turn in its policy towards favouring a merger with the Indian Union. The French authorities replied by stepping up the pressure on the party and its leaders. In some instances party members were attacked. Goubert and Mouttoupoulle (mayor of Pondicherry) went underground to evade capture. The party began to planning to build a parallel administration in the peripheries of the Pondicherry district. The party was able to use its dominance of local communities, which had been established with French patronage, to mobilize resistance against French rule. The civil disobedience campaign of the Socialist Party (with support from other nationalist parties) was launched on March 27, 1954. The Socialist Party resistance campaign was crucial in destabilizing French control over the colony.

In May 1954, following the formation of the French India Liberation Council in Nettapakkam on May 17, the party adopted the name French India Liberation Congress.

Affiliations

The French India Socialist Party was not affiliated with neither the Socialist Party of India nor the French Socialist Party (SFIO)

Sfio

Sfio, or Safe/Fast String/File I/O, is a C programming language I/O library developed by David Korn and Kiem-Phong Vo AT&T Labs Research, intended as a replacement for the standard C standard I/O library....

. It was linked to the UDSR in France. In Mahe there was a local Socialist Party

Mahe Socialist Party

The Mahe Socialist Party was a political party in Mahé, French India. The party was a unit of the Indian Socialist Party. It had no links to the Socialist Party of French India of Edouard Goubert. Raghavan Mangalat was the secretary of the party....

, with no links to Goubert's French India Socialist Party.