Joan of Arc Statue

The statue was donated by François Gaudart (1844–1923), founder of the Forges et ateliers Gaudart-Sainte-Élisabeth, a metallurgical works that at its peak employed up to 4,000 Indian workers. When Gaudart sold the business in 1919 for approximately 75 million francs, it was one of the largest private transactions in the history of French India. He received the Légion d'honneur in 1914 and died in Cannes in 1923, three years after commissioning this statue.

The occasion was the canonisation of Joan of Arc by Pope Benedict XV on 16 May 1920, two years after the Armistice. Joan's image resonated in Pondicherry with a particular force. The same English whose East India Company had besieged this city four times, razed it to the ground in 1761, and systematically dismantled French power in India had been defeated in the First World War. The Virgin of Orléans who had expelled the English from France found a natural home on the Coromandel Coast.

The statue is positioned to align with the sunrise and the east-west axis of Notre-Dame des Anges, making the garden an intentional extension of the church. It is in white marble rather than local coral stone, a material choice that signals both Gaudart's wealth and his intention to build something permanent. It became the focal point of an annual gathering on Joan's feast day (30 May). Under Gaullist Governor Charles Baron during the Second World War, that gathering became an explicit act of resistance and a rallying point for French India's Free France movement.

The garden is still alive with the French community. On most mornings, retired Franco-Pondicherrians of French origin gather here to play pétanque beneath the statue. Joan of Arc looks on. It is one of the most quietly French scenes in Pondicherry.