World Courant
Antwerp, Belgium — The streets of Antwerp’s Diamond Quarter are lined with jewellery shops, pawn retailers and eating places. Balls of gefilte fish glisten invitingly within the window of Hoffy’s, a beloved and long-standing Jewish restaurant. Across the nook is a lunch line for Aahaar, an Indian restaurant catering to Antwerp’s Jain neighborhood, the place I meet Akash Jain for lunch.
“You may get pleasure from good issues in life, however what issues is doing it in a great way and being a mild individual,” says Akash, who sits throughout from me at a desk, tucking right into a plate of curry greens. “It is the distinction between reducing somebody’s hair or nails and slitting their throat. Management your self. Solely take what you want. That’s the Jain philosophy.”
Akash’s easy vegetarian food plan is a mirrored image of his religious religion. The Jain dedication to non-violence is so strongly aligned that monks and nuns sweep the bottom in entrance of them to keep away from stepping on bugs. Each spiritual figures and lay folks – together with Akash – observe a strict vegetarian food plan, catered by eating places like Aahaar. Even root greens are prohibited as a result of harvesting them kills the plant.
‘Purely enterprise’
Nearly all of Antwerp Jains have their roots within the metropolis of Palanpur within the western Indian state of Gujarat, though Akash himself grew up in Udaipur, a metropolis well-known for its palaces and lakes within the desert state of Rajasthan. The Jains’ causes for transferring to Belgium, he tells me, had been purely enterprise in nature.
“In India, the diamond commerce is run by the Jain neighborhood, so after they discovered alternatives right here in Antwerp, or in Hong Kong, New York, Tokyo, they moved,” he says. “All of it is dependent upon enterprise situations, and Antwerp is the middle of the diamond commerce. Right here they discovered that the federal government has favorable services for enterprise. Purely enterprise.”
The Jain temple in Antwerp (Daniel Stables/Al Jazeera)
The Antwerp Jains are a quiet neighborhood that retains to itself and largely mixes with outsiders to do enterprise. Most of them dwell within the suburb of Wilrijk, close to town’s Jain temple.
Alcohol is prohibited, so that you’re unlikely to come across Jains in Antwerp’s vibrant nightlife; somewhat, their social life facilities round their residence, the temple, and Jain-friendly eating places like Aahaar and Sangeetha, one other common vegetarian spot.
Nevertheless, the skilled world by which Akash works, together with most of the 1,500-strong Jain neighborhood in Antwerp, is something however modest.
Jains dominate Antwerp’s diamond trade, essentially the most profitable and influential on this planet, which has slowly changed the Orthodox Jewish neighborhood over the previous sixty years. How, then, did a religion based mostly on moderation and non-attachment to materials issues come to dominate this most glittering and profane of professions?
“Jewellery and diamonds are in my blood,” says Akash with a self-effacing smile. “My dad and mom and grandparents had been concerned within the commerce of treasured metals, gold bullion and pearls in India. The Jain neighborhood is historically very extremely educated; they’re primarily lively in enterprise, administration, finance and accounting. Since historic occasions, Jains have traded in gem stones, diamonds, spices and garments.”
Employees minimize diamonds in a workshop in Antwerp, Belgium, on February 1, 2018 (Francois Lenoir/Reuters)
Act, not produce
Jainism originated in India hundreds of years in the past and is likely one of the oldest surviving religions on this planet. Jains make up solely about 0.4 p.c of India’s inhabitants, however have disproportionate affect inside the nation, particularly within the enterprise world. Many, like Akash, bear the surname “Jain”, however many others don’t.
Gautam Adani, India’s second-richest individual – and the twenty third richest on this planet – is Jain, as is Amit Shah, the nation’s highly effective residence minister, who’s extensively seen as Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s second-in-command.
“Our most necessary teachings are: reality; ahimsa (non-violence); and aparigraha (non-possession) – not taking what you do not want,” says Akash. “Do not get hooked up to bodily issues; cash, land, that form of factor.”
“In Jainism you have got main moral laws which have led to guidelines about which jobs are acceptable,” says professor Tine Vekemans, an skilled in Jainism at Ghent College. “They’d by no means work as butchers or leather-based employees, nor historically in agriculture. There’s lots of potential violence in pulling issues out of the bottom, damaging small creatures within the floor.”
In fact, mining diamonds will not be precisely environmentally pleasant both. “That’s the reason Jains are into commerce and never manufacturing,” says Akash. “Much less direct.”
Jains have additionally taken steps to counter the unethical parts of the trade and stem the stream of ‘battle diamonds’.
“Jain diamond corporations have accomplished lots of work wanting on the origins of their diamonds and something within the provide chain that may very well be unethical,” says Vekemans. They had been influential within the growth and software of the Kimberley Course of; India, the place the diamond commerce can be dominated by Jains, was a founding member of this worldwide certification program that goals to get rid of battle diamonds from the trade.
Muffled conversations in marble hallways
Tucked within the shadow of Antwerp’s grand Artwork Nouveau station, the Diamantkwartier is an not noticeable cluster of sq., grey and brown buildings from the Nineteen Sixties and Seventies. It is an unassuming setting for the capital of the worldwide diamond trade – a title Antwerp has claimed since 1456 when jeweler Lodewyk van Bercken infused his sprucing wheel with olive oil and diamond mud to invent the scaif, a revolutionary device that made it potential to completely to chop diamonds. symmetrical diamonds. These days, Antwerp processes 100 million euros price of diamonds daily.
An historic Jain icon, also called a swastika, is pasted on the door of a safe storage room on the workplace of Arjav Diamonds India Pvt Ltd in Antwerp, Belgium, on Monday, August 14, 2017. (Jasper Juinen/Bloomberg by way of Getty Photographs)
On the middle of all of it is the Antwerp diamond change, the place Tom Neys works, a consultant of the Antwerp World Diamond Middle, which oversees town’s diamond commerce. He could be present in a chic, cavernous room filled with buying and selling tables, the place hushed conversations echo off marble columns and parquet flooring.
Orthodox Jews had dominated the Antwerp diamond commerce for a whole lot of years earlier than Jain merchants arrived within the mid-Twentieth century. “The primary diamonds ever discovered had been in India, however traditionally there wasn’t a lot worldwide commerce,” says Neys. That each one modified within the Nineteen Sixties, when Jain merchants from Gujarat began shopping for small, tough diamonds at a low worth, outsourcing the reducing and sprucing to artisans in Gujarat, after which promoting them in Antwerp. “Right now, 95 p.c of diamonds bought listed below are minimize and polished in India,” he says.
That offer chain provides Jain merchants an edge over everybody else. About 80 p.c of Antwerp’s diamond merchants are actually Jains, and most of them hint their roots to the Gujarati city of Palanpur. The Jain and Jewish communities in Antwerp are effectively suited to the diamond commerce for a similar causes: they’re small, close-knit and constructed on belief.
A closed membership with ‘Wished’ posters
At one level a person in a swimsuit walks as much as him and consults with Neys in a involved tone; he is fearful about me taking footage with my cellphone, which I am holding to document our interview. In an trade based mostly on belief, outsiders are seen with suspicion; this can be a closed membership. Even those that agreed to share different trade particulars didn’t consent to images being taken.
On the wall, Neys reveals me a rogues’ gallery of people at present suspected of impropriety or unreliability, their images lined up above their names like “Wished” posters in an Previous West salon. Their alleged misdeeds are listed in imprecise however heavy phrases: fraud; theft; cash laundering. Their names – some English, some Dutch, some Arabic, some Cantonese – replicate the worldwide facilities of the worldwide diamond commerce, though, tellingly, none seem like Jewish or Jain.
It is all accomplished this fashion, Neys explains, based mostly on rumor and repute, somewhat than by on-line databases. There are literally no computer systems to be seen on the buying and selling flooring. “Within the diamond trade, nothing is written down on paper – it is a handshake and also you say ‘Mazal’, a Yiddish expression meaning ‘good luck,’” says Neys.
This linguistic legacy, he explains, displays an ongoing collaboration and respect between Antwerp’s Jewish and Jain communities, based mostly on equally religious spiritual beliefs and deeply held values of honesty and transparency.
Contained in the evaluation laboratory of the Diamond Excessive Council in Antwerp (Daniel Stables/Al Jazeera)
A matter of belief
The rise of the Jains over the Antwerp diamond commerce in current many years doesn’t seem to have created lasting stress between the Jain and Jewish communities right here; somewhat, it has triggered the 2 communities to give attention to completely different sides of the trade.
Whereas the Jains now dominate the wholesale commerce, stones of the best high quality are nonetheless polished right here within the Antwerp Jewish workshops. The Jewish neighborhood has moved from dominating all areas of Antwerp’s commerce to specializing within the highest phase of the market.
Akash later expresses the same sentiment as he reveals me round Antwerp’s Jain temple. “Belief – that’s a very powerful a part of the diamond commerce,” he says. “You’ll by no means see a enterprise run solely on belief, apart from diamonds and gem stones.”
The Antwerp Jain Temple is situated within the leafy suburb of Wilrijk, on the southern fringe of town – an unassuming place, the place essentially the most thrilling occasion on the cultural calendar is the Goat Parade, a procession of goats that comes round as soon as each 5 years.
It comes as a shock, then, to see, amid the charity retailers and automobile garages, the rising towers of a ravishing temple, carved from snow-white marble, fantastically carved with scenes from Indian mythology and topped with the technicolor flag of the Jain faith. It was paid for by the Jain neighborhood, and whereas the beautiful craftsmanship definitely appears to be like costly, it’s an train in good style and restraint.
“You must have a satisfaction issue for the whole lot – for cash, for consuming habits, the whole lot,” says Akash.
In the end, Akash believes that the spiritual basis of Jains makes them good businessmen. “We consider in karma and we’re clear, trustworthy folks. In case you have good karma, your life can be good.”
‘Diamonds are in my blood’: The Jain jewelers of Antwerp | Enterprise and Financial system
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