Insiders and Outsiders Archives - understand-culture

Recruited from the Village

The dabbawalas of Mumbai, who carry lunch boxes from homes to offices, do not hire strangers. “We don’t recruit our dabbawalas externally, they have to have a bond with the people in our district,” one of them told researchers in a study published by Open Book Publishers. Another said: “When we’re a man short, we call someone from the village.”

New members come from 30 villages in and around Pune, Knowledge at Wharton reports. It quotes the researcher Agrawal: “Most people tend to refer their friends or family members who belong to the same community. The only recruitment criterion is a ‘guarantee’.”

Diamonds Without a Contract

In the Mumbai diamond market, rough stones arrive mostly from Antwerp. “The rough stones are received on credit, without a written contract,” the economist Kaivan Munshi writes in a study published in the Review of Economic Studies in 2011. In the late 1970s the Kathiawaris, a community of agricultural laborers and sharecroppers, entered the business. Their community network supplied the credit and the referrals to suppliers.

In Munshi’s words, “the threat of community-based sanctions is sufficiently severe,” and “intra-industry marriage can serve as a very powerful commitment device.”

Entering Behind Them

Many Marwari traders from Rajasthan settled in Calcutta. Drawing on Timberg’s history of the community, the researcher Nakatani writes: “The first Marwaris helped others to enter behind them.” They gave newcomers jobs and “opened a living place run on a cooperative basis for newcomers to stay in.”

As a commercial community, Nakatani adds, they “had relatively easy access to credit, information, and manpower from their organization.”

The Vocabulary of Insiders

Ghar ka aadmi. A man of the house. The Rekhta dictionary gives “member of one’s family, family friend.” Its Hindi entry extends the meaning to relatives, a personal servant and an acquaintance.

Ghar ki baat. A matter of the house. Rekhta gives in Hindi a secret of the house, a matter between ourselves, a private matter.

Langotiya yaar. A loincloth friend. Rekhta gives “an old friend (from childhood), a very intimate friend, a playmate, a crony, bosom buddies.”

Bengal Wants Its Own Daughter

In the 2021 West Bengal assembly election, the Trinamool Congress launched the slogan Bangla nijer meyekei chai, Bengal wants its own daughter.

The party presented the leaders of the opposition party as “outsiders who are on ‘election tourism’ to the state,” the Deccan Herald reported. “They don’t want some outsiders to take over the reins of Bengal,” a party leader said.

The Oath Before the Fire

In the Valmiki Ramayana, the monkey king Sugriva sees Rama and Lakshmana in the forest and is afraid. He tells his ministers that his brother Vali “must have dispatched them.” His minister Hanuman reports to him about the two brothers.

Hanuman then brings them to Sugriva. Rama and Sugriva “take the oath of friendship before an altar of fire.” Only after this does Sugriva tell Rama that he saw Sita carried off through the sky. He shows him the ornaments she dropped, wrapped in her upper cloth.

To Count as One’s Own

Apna samajhna, to count someone as one’s own. The Rekhta dictionary defines it in Hindi as behaving without hesitation in a close or friendly relationship, and counting someone as dear, close, a companion or a confidant, vishvaspatra. Its second meaning is to regard something as one’s own property.