France

France reaches the Panth’s story through four threads.

Officers at Lahore. Jean-François Allard, born at Saint-Tropez on 8 March 1785, served in Napoleon’s cavalry and Imperial Guard. He reached Lahore in March 1822 with the Italian-born Jean-Baptiste Ventura. Maharaja Ranjit Singh hired them only after satisfying himself that they were Napoleonic officers and not British spies. Ventura organised the infantry and Allard raised the cavalry of the Fauji Khas, which numbered 5,000 to 6,000 men by 1825. Allard died at Peshawar on 23 January 1839 and was buried at Lahore with military honours.

The Western Front. The first Indian troops landed at Marseilles on 30 September 1914. Sikhs were 18 percent of the Indian Army’s combat force when the war began, against 1 percent of India’s people. At Neuve-Chapelle in March 1915 the Indian Corps suffered 4,200 casualties, and the memorial there names 4,700 Indian soldiers and labourers with no known grave. Wikipedia adds that some Sikh soldiers who had served in the French army settled in Marseille and Paris afterwards.

Sikhs in France. Wikipedia estimates about 30,000 Sikhs, most in the Paris region. Law 2004-228, signed on 15 March 2004 and in force from 2 September 2004, bars conspicuous religious symbols in public schools, and at least five turbaned Sikh pupils near Paris were kept out of class. On 1 November 2012 the UN Human Rights Committee decided Singh v. France (No. 1852/2008), the case of a Sikh pupil expelled in 2008 for wearing a keski or turban; Wikipedia reports that it found a breach of the Covenant.

The Rafale argument. On 28 April 2025 India signed a deal for 26 Rafale Marine jets, worth about Rs 64,000 crore. At a Dal Khalsa seminar at Bhai Gurdas Hall, Amritsar, on 29 April 2025, Paramjit Singh Mand answered the question of where a Sikh state would get weapons. He said that India, 75 years old, was still buying arms and aircraft from France “yesterday”, so a Sikh state could buy from the world too, and that it would not end trade with the world.