Family quest reveals a lost chapter of Indo-French history

Standing in a book-lined room at Le Cercle Littéraire in Kala Ghoda last week, Céline Malraux is trying to solve a family mystery.The French author never met her grandfather André Malraux, who died two years before she was born.

Now, fifty years after the death of the celebrated novelist, Resistance fighter and France’s first culture minister, she is retracing a journey that took him from New Delhi to Elephanta caves and Ellora monuments .“I yearn for a serendipitous moment where suddenly I get it,” she says. “His fascination with Indian mythology, how he felt when he first saw the Elephanta caves. I’d really like to see India through his eyes.”For many Indians, Malraux is now little more than a footnote. But when he travelled through the country at Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru’s invitation in 1958, he became one of the most influential Western voices arguing thatIndian art and civilisation deserved to be viewed on the same terms as those of Greece and Rome.That fascination, Céline explains, stemmed from the questions that occupied him throughout his life.

“Malraux was deeply interested in the human condition: death, suffering, the absurdity of life,” she says. “He thought the answer lay in spirituality, in finding the sacred within art.”But she is wary of reducing his relationship with India to a familiar Western search for enlightenment. “Malraux didn’t see India simply as a land of spiritual quest. He always believed the country could connect spirituality and action.”The connection feels unusually tangible in Mumbai. Le Cercle Littéraire, where Céline was on Friday, sits a short ride from the Gateway of India, where ferries leave daily for Elephanta. The caves were one of the stops on Malraux’s 1958 state visit, hosted by Nehru.“Nehru didn’t want Malraux to meet ascetics and sages,” Céline says. “He wanted him to see the potential of modern India. And Malraux understood that.”His itinerary reflects that. Hosted by the prime minister, he visited not only Elephanta caves and the rock-cut complexes of Ellora, but also Bhakra Nangal dam, one of the great symbols of India’s post-independence ambition.The visit deepened a friendship that had begun more than two decades earlier. Nehru and Malraux first met in Paris in 1936 and then in 1958. They then remained in touch until Nehru’s death, through years that would transform both men into global figures.What she has not made peace with, and perhaps does not want to, is how relevant some of his battles still feel. Malraux first made his name as an antifascist intellectual during the Spanish Civil War.Art, she argues, remains part of that struggle.For Céline, this trip is not simply about commemorating a famous intellectual. It is about following a trail left by someone she never knew, through a country that never forgot what he saw, even if it forgot him. “I’d really like to see India through his eyes,” she says.