Testimonials
India: 75 years of history through the eyes of three generations
From left to right: Maharaja Krishna Rasgotra, 97, Anand Kumar Rathi, 41, and Vivek Yadav, 25 © RFI
Text by: Sébastien Farcis Follow
7 mins
On August 15, 1947, India gained its independence, after British colonization for nearly a century, 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.
View of three Indians of three different ages and social origins, on the evolution of their country for 75 years.
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From our correspondent in New Delhi,
Maharaja Krishna Rasgotra has deep wrinkles and a slow walk.
But this 97-year-old man still has a piercing gaze and a vivid memory.
On August 15, 1947, when India and Pakistan gained their independence, he was 22 years old.
This Hindu from Kashmir then works on the Indian side of the new border, but his whole family has remained living 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 appear, but we have good relations with our Muslim neighbours, so what can happen to us?'
”.
But the situation is rapidly deteriorating.
In the days leading up to independence, murders and rapes were increasingly common in this part of West Punjab, where many Hindus then lived.
On August 15, the army gathered the Hindus together to escort them in their flight.
"
My elderly parents abandoned everything and left on foot for the Indian border,
" says Maharaja Rasgotra.
It took them all day and they were attacked on the way, but thanks to the protection of the army, they survived
”.
Many others are not so lucky.
Hundreds of thousands perish in these attacks, and women are routinely raped.
Even the trains are stormed, and wagons arrive at the station filled with corpses.
Up to 2 million dead
This young professor of English literature then participates in the organization of a huge refugee camp opened in his university in the border town of Ludhiana, in the new Indian Punjab.
Up to 50,000 people are accommodated here, in tents.
“
I read the fear of these people in their eyes, they were terrified and their stories continue to haunt me,
testifies Maharaja Rasgotra.
Some had lost half of their family members, others arrived with a severed arm.
A family of Sikhs told me that their daughters preferred to kill themselves by throwing themselves into a well to avoid being abducted
”.
This monumental exodus led to the death of 200,000 to 2 million people and the flight of 10 to 20 million others.
And this partition of India and Pakistan continues to obsess Indians because, 75 years later, the religious divisions that caused it are still deep and regularly exploited by politicians.
"
The religious riots continue today, it is one of the legacies of this partition which we have not managed to get rid of
", concludes Maharaja Rasgotra, who was a high-ranking diplomat, and among others, ambassador of the India in France.
Maharaja Krishna Rasgotra, 97, experienced the partition of his region of Kashmir at the time of independence.
His Hindu family had to flee from the Pakistani side.
© Sebastien Farcis/RFI
From a modest family in India's Silicon Valley
But since those dark times, India has experienced phenomenal development.
When British settlers left the subcontinent, famines struck regularly and killed off, the education system was so underdeveloped that only 12% of the population was literate.
Today, India is self-sufficient in food and even exports wheat;
77% of Indians are literate and its public engineering colleges are recognized worldwide.
And the next generation is reaping the rewards.
Anand Kumar Rathi, 41, comes from a modest 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 became one of the biggest matchbox sellers in India
."
And this allowed his children to rise quickly in society: Anand Rathi is today an investment banker and manager of great fortunes in Bangalore.
His company Augment, based in this Indian Silicon Valley, manages 5 billion rupees of capital (about 60 million euros).
“
India has taken two to three decades behind in its development because the educated elite of the country has left to work in the West,
deplores Anand Rathi.
And it pisses me off to know that our country has failed to provide places for these people who could have brought rapid change to the country
.”
This brain drain has faded, and some are even returning to India, which makes the sector more competitive, believes this specialist.
“
New technologies are at such an advanced level in India that we are no longer just dealing with outsourced services and call centers, but the development of artificial intelligence around the world.
The opportunities are going to be huge for India in the years to come
“says Anand Rathi, optimistic.
Anand Kumar Rathi, 41, son of a modest family, founded his wealth management company for wealthy Indians in Bangalore.
© Personal Archives of Anand Kumar Rathi
Inequalities and discrimination between castes
Indian economic growth, partly driven by these new technologies, has indeed been tremendous for thirty years and the Indian economy is today the third richest in the world, in terms of purchasing power parity.
But this wealth is very poorly redistributed, which means that Indian society is also one of the most unequal - the richest 10% own 57% of the wealth, according to the
Global Inequality Report
, coordinated by Thomas Piketty among others. .
Seventy-five years after its independence, India also continues to suffer from two chronic ills: discrimination between castes and corruption.
"
In my village, upper caste people do everything to discourage me from studying because they don't want me to become more educated than them
," said Vivek Yadav, a 25-year-old low-caste student from Jaunpur, Uttar Pradesh, in the North.
This son of a day laborer with little education and an illiterate mother has already broken a glass ceiling: he obtained a university degree in political science and is preparing for the regional civil service exams - a job as a civil servant which would offer him guaranteed income, and therefore a guaranteed way out of poverty.
But the entrance exam he took in July could be canceled, due to suspicions of corruption and leaks of the tests.
Vivek Yadav will persist despite everything, with 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 India's population, around 700 million people, is under the age of 25.
Providing quality education to the greatest number will certainly decide India's future development.
Vivek Yadav, 25, in his dormitory in Allahabad, Uttar Pradesh, where he is preparing for civil service exams to try to secure a better life.
© Gaurav Gulmohar/RFI
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