Antwerp, Belgium — The streets of Antwerp’s Diamond Quarter are lined with jewellers, pawn outlets and eating places. Balls of gefilte fish glisten invitingly within the window of Hoffy’s, a beloved and longstanding Jewish diner. Across the nook, a lunchtime queue is gathering exterior Aahaar, an Indian restaurant catering to Antwerp’s Jain neighborhood, the place I meet Akash Jain for lunch.
“You’ll be able to get pleasure from good issues in life, but it surely’s about doing it in method, and being a mild human being,” says Akash, seated at a desk reverse me, as he tucks right into a plate of curried greens. “It’s the distinction between chopping one thing’s hair or nails and chopping its throat. Management your self. Take solely what you want. That’s the Jain philosophy.”
Akash’s humble vegetarian weight loss plan is a mirrored image of his religious religion. The Jain dedication to non-violence is so extremely tuned that monks and nuns sweep the bottom earlier than them to keep away from stepping on bugs. Spiritual figures and lay individuals alike – Akash included – comply with a strict vegetarian weight loss plan, catered for 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’s 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, have been solely business-based.
“In India, the diamond enterprise is commanded by the Jain neighborhood, so once they discovered alternatives right here in Antwerp, or in Hong Kong, New York, Tokyo – they moved,” he says. “All of it relies on enterprise circumstances, and Antwerp is the diamond enterprise hub. Right here they discovered that the federal government, the services are beneficial for enterprise. Purely enterprise.”
Antwerp’s Jains are a quiet neighborhood who maintain themselves to themselves, largely mixing with outsiders solely to do enterprise. Most of them dwell within the suburb of Wilrijk, within the neighborhood of town’s Jain temple.
Alcohol is forbidden, so Jains are unlikely to be discovered having fun with Antwerp’s bustling nightlife scene; moderately, their social lives are centred round dwelling, the temple, and Jain-friendly eating places equivalent to Aahaar and Sangeetha, one other standard vegetarian place.
The skilled world during which Akash works, nonetheless, together with a lot of Antwerp’s 1,500-strong Jain neighborhood, is something however humble.
Jains dominate Antwerp’s diamond trade, essentially the most profitable and influential on the earth, having slowly taken over from the Orthodox Jewish neighborhood over the previous 60 years. So how does a religion based mostly on moderation and non-attachment to materials issues, have come to dominate this most glittery and profane of professions?
“Jewelry and diamonds are in my blood,” says Akash with a self-effacing smile. “My mother and father and grandparents have been within the enterprise of treasured metals, bullion and pearls in India. The Jain neighborhood is historically very extremely educated; they’re principally in enterprise, administration, finance and accounting. Since historical instances, Jains have been buying and selling in gems, diamonds, spices and garments.”
Buying and selling, not manufacturing
Jainism originated in India hundreds of years in the past, and is likely one of the oldest extant religions on the earth. Jains solely make up about 0.4 p.c of the Indian inhabitants however are disproportionately influential inside the nation, particularly on the earth of enterprise. Many, like Akash, bear the surname “Jain”, however many others don’t.
Gautam Adani, India’s second-richest – and the world’s twenty third most rich – particular person is Jain, as is Amit Shah, the nation’s highly effective dwelling minister who’s extensively seen as Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s second-in-command.
“Our predominant teachings are: reality; ahimsa (non-violence); and aparigraha (non-possession) – not taking what you don’t want,” says Akash. “Don’t get hooked up to bodily issues; cash, land, issues like that.”
“In Jainism you may have these massive moral injunctions 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 leatherworkers, nor historically in agriculture – there’s lots of potential violence with pulling issues out of the bottom, damaging little creatures within the soil.”
Mining diamonds isn’t precisely eco-friendly both, after all. “That’s why Jains are into buying and selling, not manufacturing,” says Akash. “Much less direct.”
Jains have additionally taken steps to counter the unethical components of the trade and to stymie the circulate of “battle diamonds”.
“Jain diamond companies have completed lots of work wanting on the supply of their diamonds and for something within the provide line which can be unethical,” says Vekemans. They have been influential within the improvement and software of the Kimberley Course of; India, the place the diamond commerce can be dominated by Jains, was one of many founding members of this worldwide certification scheme which goals to eradicate battle diamonds from the trade.
Hushed conversations in marble corridors
Tucked away within the shadow of Antwerp’s grand Artwork Nouveau railway station, the Diamond Quarter is an unprepossessing cluster of boxy, gray and brown buildings relationship again to the Sixties and ‘70s. It’s a modest setting for the capital of the world diamond trade – a title Antwerp has claimed since 1456 when jeweller Lodewyk van Bercken infused his sharpening wheel with olive oil and diamond mud to invent the scaif, a revolutionary instrument which allowed for the chopping of completely symmetrical diamonds. At this time, Antwerp processes 100 million euros ($106m) of diamonds every day.
On the centre of all of it is Antwerp’s diamond trade, the place Tom Neys, a consultant of the Antwerp World Diamond Centre, which oversees town’s diamond commerce, works. He may be present in a sublime, cavernous room lined with buying and selling desks, the place hushed conversations echo off marble columns and parquet flooring.
Orthodox Jews had dominated Antwerp’s diamond commerce for lots of of years earlier than Jain merchants started arriving within the mid-Twentieth century. “The primary diamonds ever discovered have been in India, however traditionally they didn’t commerce a lot internationally,” says Neys. That each one modified within the Sixties, when Jain merchants from Gujarat started shopping for small, tough diamonds at a low value, outsourcing chopping and sharpening to craftspeople again in Gujarat, after which promoting them in Antwerp. “At this time, 95 p.c of the diamonds bought listed below are lower and polished in India,” he says.
That offer chain offers Jain merchants an edge over everybody else. About 80 p.c of Antwerp’s diamond merchants are actually Jains, most of them tracing their roots to the Gujarati metropolis of Palanpur. The Jain and Jewish communities in Antwerp are well-suited to the diamond commerce for a similar causes: they’re small, close-knit and constructed on belief.
A closed membership with ‘Needed’ posters
At one level, a person in a go well with walks over and consults with Neys in involved tones; he’s frightened about me taking photos on my cellphone, which I’m holding to document our interview. In an trade based mostly on belief, outsiders are considered with suspicion; it is a closed membership. Even those that agreed to share different particulars of the trade didn’t consent to having their pictures taken.
On the wall, Neys reveals me a rogues’ gallery of people presently suspected of impropriety or untrustworthiness, their photos lined up above their names like “Needed” posters in an Previous West saloon. 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 hubs of the world diamond commerce, though, tellingly, none seem like Jewish or Jain.
It’s all completed this manner, Neys explains, based mostly on rumour and fame, moderately than by way of on-line databases – there are, in reality, no computer systems in sight on the buying and selling flooring. “Within the diamond trade, nothing is on paper – it’s a handshake, and also you say ‘Mazal’, a Yiddish phrase that means ‘good luck’,” says Neys.
This linguistic legacy, he explains, displays a unbroken cooperation and respect between the Jewish and Jain communities in Antwerp, based mostly on equally religious spiritual beliefs and entrenched values of honesty and transparency.
A query of belief
The Jain rise to dominance over the Antwerp diamond commerce over the previous few a long time doesn’t appear to have created lasting stress between the Jain and Jewish communities right here; moderately, it has seen the 2 communities concentrate on totally different sides of the trade.
Whereas Jains now overwhelmingly dominate the wholesale commerce, the highest-quality stones are nonetheless polished right here in Antwerp’s Jewish workshops. The Jewish neighborhood has transitioned from dominating all areas of the Antwerp commerce to specialising on the highest finish of the market.
Akash expresses an identical sentiment later whereas exhibiting me round Antwerp’s Jain temple. “Belief – that’s the primary a part of the diamond enterprise,” he says. “You’ll by no means see any enterprise run solely on belief, besides diamonds and gems.”
Antwerp’s Jain temple is located within the leafy suburb of Wilrijk, on the southern fringes of town – an unassuming place, the place essentially the most thrilling occasion on the cultural calendar is the Geitenstoet, a procession of goats which passes by way of as soon as each 5 years.
It comes as one thing of a shock, then, amid the charity outlets and automobile garages, to see the rising towers of an impressive 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 paid for by the Jain neighborhood, and whereas its beautiful craftsmanship definitely appears costly, it’s an train in good style and restraint.
“You need to have a satisfaction issue for every thing – for cash, for consuming habits, every thing,” says Akash.
In the end, Akash believes Jains’ spiritual grounding makes them good businesspeople. “We imagine in karma and we’re clear, trustworthy individuals. If in case you have good karma, your life might be good.”
