Published on: 08/15/2022 – 08:02 Modified on: 08/15/2022 – 08:07
On August 15, 1947, India gained independence after almost a century of British colonization and at the cost of a bloody partition with Pakistan. Since then, the country has had to recover to try to form an egalitarian democracy. Views of three Indians of three ages and social backgrounds on the development of their country over the past 75 years.
From our correspondent in New Delhi,
Maharaja Krishna Rasgotra has deep wrinkles and a slow gait. But this 97-year-old man still has a penetrating gaze and a vivid memory. He was 22 years old on August 15, 1947, when India and Pakistan gained independence. This Hindu from Kashmiri then works on the Indian side of the new border, but his whole family lives on the Pakistani side.
“My parents didn’t want to leave,” says Maharaja Rasgotra from his residence in New Delhi. They said to me: ‘A line will be drawn, a border will emerge, but we have good relations with our Muslim neighbors, so what can happen to us?’”. But the situation is rapidly deteriorating. In the pre-independence days, murder and rape increased in this part of western Punjab, which was then populous with Hindus.
On August 15, the army rallied the Hindus to escort them as they fled. “My elderly parents gave up everything and walked to the Indian border,” says Maharaja Rasgotra. It took them all day and they were attacked along the way, but thanks to the army’s protection, they survived.” Many others are not so lucky. Hundreds of thousands are killed in these attacks, and women are routinely raped. Even the trains are stormed, and wagons arrive at the station full of corpses.
Up to 2 million dead
This young English literature professor then gets involved in organizing a huge refugee camp that has been opened at his university in the border town of Ludhiana in new Indian Punjab. Up to 50,000 people are accommodated here in tents. “I saw the fear in these people’s eyes, they were horrified and their stories continue to haunt me,” Maharaja Rasgotra testified. Some had lost half of their family members, others arrived with a severed arm. A family of Sikhs told me that their daughters chose to commit suicide by throwing themselves into a well to avoid being kidnapped.”
This massive exodus resulted in the deaths of 200,000 to 2 million people and the displacement of 10 to 20 million others. And this division of India and Pakistan continues to bother Indians because 75 years later, the religious divisions they caused still run deep and are regularly exploited by politicians. “The religious unrest continues to this day, it is one of the legacies of this partition that we have not gotten rid of,” concludes Maharaja Rasgotra, who was a senior diplomat and, among other things, India’s ambassador to France.
Maharaja Krishna Rasgotra, 97, saw the partition of his Kashmir region at the time of independence. His Hindu family had to flee from the Pakistani side. © Sebastien Farcis/RFI
From a humble family in India’s Silicon Valley
But since those dark hours, India has seen phenomenal development. When the British settlers left the subcontinent, famine and deaths were a regular occurrence, and the education system was so underdeveloped that only 12% of the population could read and write. Today India is self-sufficient in food and even exports wheat; 77% of Indians are educated and their public engineering colleges are recognized worldwide. And the next generation reaps the rewards.
Anand Kumar Rathi, 41, comes from a humble family in Rajasthan. His father did not finish high school and left this northern region to try his luck in the great Indian south, in Tamil Nadu. “He was never afraid to take risks and through hard work his business grew into one of the biggest matchbox sellers in India.” And that quickly saw his children rise through the ranks: Anand Rathi is now an investment banker and wealthy manager in Bangalore. His company Augment, based in India’s Silicon Valley, manages 5 billion rupees of capital (around 60 million euros).
“India has been lagging behind in development for two to three decades because the country’s educated elite has migrated to work in the West,” Anand Rathi regrets. And it angers me to know that our country has failed to provide places for these people who could have changed the country quickly.” That brain drain has eased, with some even returning to India, making the sector more competitive, I believe this specialist. “New technologies are at such an advanced level in India that we are no longer just concerned with outsourced services and call centers, but with the development of artificial intelligence around the world. The opportunities for India will be enormous in the coming years,” Anand Rathi assures optimistically.
Anand Kumar Rathi, 41, from a humble family, founded his wealth management company for wealthy Indians in Bangalore. © Anand Kumar Rathi’s personal archive
Inequalities and discrimination between castes
Indeed, Indian economic growth, driven in part by these new technologies, has been tremendous for thirty years and the Indian economy is now the third richest in the world in terms of purchasing power parity. But that wealth is very poorly redistributed, meaning Indian society is also one of the most unequal – the richest 10% owning 57% of wealth Global Inequality Reportcoordinated by Thomas Piketty, among others.
75 years after its independence, India continues to suffer from two chronic diseases: caste discrimination and corruption. “In my village, upper-caste people are doing everything they can to stop me from studying because they don’t want me to be better educated than they are,” said Vivek Yadav, a 25-year-old lower-caste student from Jaunpur, Uttar Pradesh . in the North. However, the son of a low-educated day laborer and an illiterate mother has already broken through a glass ceiling: he has a university degree in political science and is preparing for the district civil service exam – a job as a civil servant that would offer him a guaranteed income, and therefore a guaranteed way out of poverty.
But the entrance exam he sat in July was canceled over suspicions of corruption and leaks in the tests. Despite everything, Vivek Yadav will hold on to a dream for the India of tomorrow: “That the state strengthens the public education system, because today these schools are neglected, without fans or quality infrastructure, and it is difficult to study there,” he said . Half of the Indian population, around 700 million people, is under the age of 25. Providing quality education to as many people as possible will certainly determine the future development of India.
Vivek Yadav, 25, at his dormitory in Allahabad, Uttar Pradesh, where he is preparing for civil service exams to secure a better life. © Gaurav Gulmohar/RFI