Power of Capital

Chapter 6Harnessing Domestic‐Driven Demand: India's Unique Opportunity for Sustainable Growth

When the British declared India independent in 1947, the newly minted nation was left scrambling. The imperialists had colonized the subcontinent and instituted their restrictive customs over a rich culture that had developed for more than 6,000 years. When the British left, they divided the colony along the lines of religion: Muslim Pakistan and largely secular India. Many Muslims left India for Pakistan, but a majority of Sikhs and Hindus, like my father's family, fled from Pakistan to India. While 15 million displaced people were in transit, a million people in both groups were massacred.

My father often spoke of his joy growing up “in the ditches” of the refugee camps, but neither he nor my grandparents ever spoke about the journey there. Mobs attacked the trains of fleeing people, killing as many as they could. My father was on one of those so‐called “blood trains,” and to this day, I don't know how he made it through alive. His feelings toward tragedy were clear: Don't look back; forgive and forget.

The scars of that time were buried beneath the enormous bustle of the subcontinent's masses by the time I came to Lucknow as a pre‐med student. I used to love wandering through the labyrinthine spaces above the main hall of Bara Imambara,¹ an ornate, massive meeting hall built by the Mughals, a Shia Muslim empire that was the last hold‐out before Britain's East India Company finally ...