Saint Tropez: A Slice of Indo-French Cultural Connect

• 20 May 2022

Union Minister for Information and Broadcasting Shri Anurag Singh Thakur recently visited the Allard Square in Saint Tropez in France.

• During his visit to the place, the Minister paid floral tributes at the busts of Maharaja Ranjit Singh (first Maharaja of Sikh Empire), Jean-Francois Allard (General in Maharaja Ranjit Singh’s army) and his spouse Princess Bannu Pan Dei (She was born in Chamba, Himachal Pradesh).
• Gen Allard was one of the officers in Napoleon’s court and entered into the service of Maharaja Ranjit Singh and rose to command the maharaja’s army.
• Allard is also credited with raising the ‘Fauj-i-Khas’, a model brigade in the lines of Napoleon’s army.
• While in Punjab, Allard fell in love with the princess of Chamba and married her and took her to St Tropez in 1834.
• Allard returned to Punjab and died in 1839 after a brief illness in Peshawar.
• Bannu Pan Dei continued to live in a large house built by Allard in St Tropez. She passed away in 1884.
• The busts of the Maharaja and Bannu Pan Dei were unveiled in St Tropez in 2016 as a mark of growing India-France relationship.