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Antwerp, Belgium — The streets of Antwerp’s Diamond Quarter are lined with jewellers, pawn retailers and eating places. Balls of gefilte fish glisten invitingly in the window of Hoffy’s, a beloved and longstanding Jewish diner. All over the corner, a lunchtime queue is accumulating outside Aahaar, an Indian restaurant catering to Antwerp’s Jain neighborhood, wherever I fulfill Akash Jain for lunch.
“You can appreciate awesome matters in lifestyle, but it is about carrying out it in a excellent method, and being a mild human currently being,” says Akash, seated at a table opposite me, as he tucks into a plate of curried veggies. “It’s the difference involving cutting something’s hair or nails and cutting its throat. Control oneself. Get only what you will need. That’s the Jain philosophy.”
Akash’s humble vegetarian diet regime is a reflection of his devout religion. The Jain determination to non-violence is so really tuned that monks and nuns sweep the ground prior to them to avoid stepping on bugs. Spiritual figures and lay people alike – Akash involved – comply with a stringent vegetarian eating plan, catered for by eating places like Aahaar. Even root greens are prohibited, due to the fact harvesting them kills the plant.
‘Purely business’
The greater part of Antwerp’s Jains have their roots in the town of Palanpur in the western Indian state of Gujarat, although Akash himself grew up in Udaipur, a town well known for its palaces and lakes in the desert state of Rajasthan. The Jains’ motives for going to Belgium, he tells me, ended up exclusively business-based mostly.
“In India, the diamond enterprise is commanded by the Jain neighborhood, so when they observed opportunities below in Antwerp, or in Hong Kong, New York, Tokyo – they moved,” he states. “It all depends on business enterprise circumstances, and Antwerp is the diamond company hub. Below they uncovered that the govt, the facilities are favourable for business enterprise. Purely company.”
Antwerp’s Jains are a peaceful community who hold on their own to on their own, largely mixing with outsiders only to do company. Most of them live in the suburb of Wilrijk, in the vicinity of the city’s Jain temple.
Alcohol is forbidden, so Jains are unlikely to be discovered experiencing Antwerp’s bustling nightlife scene instead, their social life are centred all-around household, the temple, and Jain-friendly dining places such as Aahaar and Sangeetha, an additional preferred vegetarian location.
The professional entire world in which Akash operates, even so, alongside with lots of of Antwerp’s 1,500-powerful Jain group, is something but humble.
Jains dominate Antwerp’s diamond sector, the most lucrative and influential in the planet, possessing slowly but surely taken over from the Orthodox Jewish local community over the previous 60 many years. So how does a faith dependent on moderation and non-attachment to material factors, have occur to dominate this most glittery and profane of professions?
“Jewellery and diamonds are in my blood,” states Akash with a self-effacing smile. “My dad and mom and grandparents were in the small business of precious metals, bullion and pearls in India. The Jain local community is customarily really extremely educated they are generally in organization, administration, finance and accounting. Since ancient moments, Jains have been trading in gems, diamonds, spices and garments.”
Investing, not production
Jainism originated in India thousands of years ago, and is a single of the oldest extant religions in the world. Jains only make up about .4 per cent of the Indian populace but are disproportionately influential in just the state, primarily in the globe of small business. Numerous, like Akash, bear the surname “Jain”, but several many others really don’t.
Gautam Adani, India’s second-richest – and the world’s 23rd most wealthy – individual is Jain, as is Amit Shah, the country’s impressive residence minister who is widely witnessed as Primary Minister Narendra Modi’s second-in-command.
“Our most important teachings are: real truth ahimsa (non-violence) and aparigraha (non-possession) – not having what you don’t will need,” says Akash. “Don’t get connected to actual physical factors revenue, land, points like that.”
“In Jainism you have these huge ethical injunctions which have led to rules about which careers are suitable,” states Professor Tine Vekemans, an skilled in Jainism at Ghent University. “They would in no way function as butchers or leatherworkers, nor typically in agriculture – there is a lot of likely violence with pulling matters out of the ground, harming little creatures in the soil.”
Mining diamonds is not accurately eco-pleasant possibly, of program. “That’s why Jains are into investing, not production,” suggests Akash. “Less immediate.”
Jains have also taken ways to counter the unethical elements of the market and to stymie the stream of “conflict diamonds”.
“Jain diamond firms have accomplished a ton of get the job done wanting at the supply of their diamonds and for anything in the source line which could be unethical,” suggests Vekemans. They had been influential in the progress and application of the Kimberley Method India, where the diamond trade is also dominated by Jains, was 1 of the founding members of this international certification scheme which aims to eradicate conflict diamonds from the market.
Hushed discussions in marble corridors
Tucked away in the shadow of Antwerp’s grand Artwork Nouveau railway station, the Diamond Quarter is an unprepossessing cluster of boxy, gray and brown properties dating back to the 1960s and ‘70s. It is a modest location for the cash of the world diamond marketplace – a title Antwerp has claimed due to the fact 1456 when jeweller Lodewyk van Bercken infused his polishing wheel with olive oil and diamond dust to invent the scaif, a groundbreaking software which allowed for the chopping of correctly symmetrical diamonds. Today, Antwerp procedures 100 million euros ($106m) of diamonds just about every day.
At the centre of it all is Antwerp’s diamond exchange, where Tom Neys, a representative of the Antwerp Globe Diamond Centre, which oversees the city’s diamond trade, performs. He can be uncovered in an stylish, cavernous room lined with trading desks, the place hushed discussions echo off marble columns and parquet floors.
Orthodox Jews experienced dominated Antwerp’s diamond trade for hundreds of many years prior to Jain traders commenced arriving in the mid-20th century. “The initial diamonds at any time found ended up in India, but traditionally they did not trade considerably internationally,” claims Neys. That all improved in the 1960s, when Jain traders from Gujarat started buying modest, tough diamonds at a small price, outsourcing slicing and sharpening to craftspeople again in Gujarat, and then marketing them in Antwerp. “Today, 95 p.c of the diamonds sold right here are reduce and polished in India,” he says.
That provide chain provides Jain traders an edge around absolutely everyone else. About 80 percent of Antwerp’s diamond traders are now Jains, most of them tracing their roots to the Gujarati metropolis of Palanpur. The Jain and Jewish communities in Antwerp are very well-suited to the diamond trade for the same causes: they’re tiny, close-knit and constructed on rely on.
A shut club with ‘Wanted’ posters
At 1 level, a person in a match walks about and consults with Neys in anxious tones he’s anxious about me using pics on my cell phone, which I’m holding to record our interview. In an market primarily based on have faith in, outsiders are considered with suspicion this is a closed club. Even individuals who agreed to share other details of the field did not consent to acquiring their photographs taken.
On the wall, Neys shows me a rogues’ gallery of individuals at present suspected of impropriety or untrustworthiness, their photographs lined up over their names like “Wanted” posters in an Outdated West saloon. Their alleged misdeeds are outlined in obscure but large phrases: fraud theft funds laundering. Their names – some English, some Dutch, some Arabic, some Cantonese – replicate the international hubs of the entire world diamond trade, though, tellingly, none look to be Jewish or Jain.
It’s all finished this way, Neys describes, based mostly on rumour and track record, instead than through on the internet databases – there are, in point, no pcs in sight on the buying and selling floor. “In the diamond market, practically nothing is on paper – it’s a handshake, and you say ‘Mazal’, a Yiddish phrase indicating ‘good luck’,” suggests Neys.
This linguistic legacy, he describes, demonstrates a continuing cooperation and respect between the Jewish and Jain communities in Antwerp, primarily based on likewise devout spiritual beliefs and entrenched values of honesty and transparency.
A problem of have confidence in
The Jain increase to dominance around the Antwerp diamond trade in excess of the previous couple of many years does not appear to have designed long lasting tension between the Jain and Jewish communities here fairly, it has noticed the two communities aim on diverse sides of the field.
Whilst Jains now overwhelmingly dominate the wholesale trade, the optimum-good quality stones are nonetheless polished below in Antwerp’s Jewish workshops. The Jewish neighborhood has transitioned from dominating all places of the Antwerp trade to specialising at the maximum finish of the current market.
Akash expresses a equivalent sentiment later on when displaying me close to Antwerp’s Jain temple. “Trust – which is the main section of the diamond small business,” he says. “You will under no circumstances see any enterprise operate only on have faith in, besides diamonds and gemstones.”
Antwerp’s Jain temple is situated in the leafy suburb of Wilrijk, on the southern fringes of the metropolis – an unassuming position, where the most remarkable celebration on the cultural calendar is the Geitenstoet, a procession of goats which passes through the moment just about every 5 years.
It will come as a thing of a surprise, then, amid the charity stores and car or truck garages, to see the rising towers of a spectacular temple, hewn from snow-white marble, exquisitely carved with scenes from Indian mythology and topped with the technicolour flag of the Jain faith. It was compensated for by the Jain local community, and though its beautiful craftsmanship absolutely appears to be high priced, it is an workout in good taste and restraint.
“You really should have a gratification component for every thing – for dollars, for consuming habits, anything,” suggests Akash.
Ultimately, Akash believes Jains’ spiritual grounding makes them good businesspeople. “We imagine in karma and we are transparent, genuine individuals. If you have good karma, your lifetime will be excellent.”
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