Annals of the American Association of Geographers

ISSN: 2469-4452 (Print) 2469-4460 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/raag21

In the Realm of the Diamond King: Myth, Magic,

and Modernity in the Diamond Tracts of Central
India

Kuntala Lahiri-Dutt & Arnab Roy Chowdhury

To cite this article: Kuntala Lahiri-Dutt & Arnab Roy Chowdhury (2018): In the Realm of the
Diamond King: Myth, Magic, and Modernity in the Diamond Tracts of Central India, Annals of the
American Association of Geographers, DOI: 10.1080/24694452.2018.1449629

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/24694452.2018.1449629

Published online: 27 Apr 2018.

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In the Realm of the Diamond King: Myth, Magic,
and Modernity in the Diamond Tracts of Central
India
y
Kuntala Lahiri-Dutt* and Arnab Roy Chowdhury
*Crawford School of Public Policy, ANU College of Asia and the Pacific, Australian National University
y
Department of Public Policy, National Research University Higher School of Economics

From being “the cradle” of raw diamonds in the world in the eighteenth century, India has turned into an insig-
nificant producer of rough diamonds today. Yet, even now, the indigenous Gonds mine diamonds artisanally in
a remote location in central India, largely hidden away from public vision. This article presents an exposition
of artisanal diamond mining in central India from the humanistic tradition in geography to illuminate the
“realm” of the Gonds, where magic and social relations rule imaginaries of the diamonds in the particular place.
It argues that the imaginations of diamonds and their mining by indigenous miners in Panna are shaped
through the prism of their particular regional history, myth, geography, and culture. Without faith in the
restrictive authority of science, capital, and state, and refusing domestication, the miners dig, smuggle, and
spend for the savoir vivre. They remain dynamic and rely on traditional ideas of luck, masculinity, and success.
They bind themselves to work and to each other in ways that preclude the possibility of amassing wealth and
direct wealth in ways that reaffirm their dependence on the miner’s life. The argument is illustrated through
the story of protagonist Ramu, who proudly spends the earnings from his big diamond find. Based on ethno-
graphic fieldwork in Panna, Madhya Pradesh State in central India, this article explores the magic of artisanal
diamond mining, shows how place shapes such mining, and shows how informal mining shapes the context.
Key Words: ASM, Gond Adivasi, informal diamond mining, Panna in central India, realm.

作为十八世纪全世界生产鑽石原料的 “摇篮”, 今日的印度已不再是知名的鑽石原料生产者。但即便在今日,

龚德原住民仍然在印度中部的偏远地区以手工採集鑽石, 并大部分未受到大众所注意。本文通过地理学的
人文传统, 呈现印度中部手工鑽石採集的盛行, 以描绘龚德的“领域”, 其中魔术与社会关系, 规范了特定地方
对于鑽石的想像。本文主张, 帕纳对鑽石的想像, 以及原住民的採矿採矿, 是通过其特定的区域历史、神
话、地理与文化的稜镜所形塑。这些採矿者不信任科学、资本与国家的规范权力, 并且拒绝被驯化, 而是
以其专有技术挖掘、走私并消费。他们仍然充满活力, 并仰赖传统的幸运、男子气概与成功的概念。他们
投身工作并约束彼此, 以此方式排除积累财富的可能, 并将财富导向再确认其对矿工生活的依赖。该主张
通过名为马努的倡导者的故事进行描绘, 他骄傲地花费因寻获大颗鑽石而赚取的财富。本文根据在印度中
部中央邦帕玛的民族志田野工作, 探讨手工採集鑽石的魔法, 展现地方如何形塑此般採矿实践, 并展示非正
式採矿如何形塑此一脉络。 关键词： ASM, 龚德原住民, 非正式鑽石採集, 印度中部的帕纳, 领域。

Tras ser considerada “la cuna” de los diamantes del mundo en el siglo XVIII, la India se ha convertido ahora en
un insignificante productor de diamantes en bruto. Sin embargo, incluso en nuestros d
ıas, los ind
ıgenas gonds
extraen diamantes artesanalmente en una remota localidad del centro de la India, en gran medida sustra
ıda de
la visibilidad p
ublica. Con base en la tradici
on human
ıstica de la geograf
ıa, este art
ıculo presenta una
exposici
on de aquella miner
ıa artesanal de diamantes, para ilustrar sobre el “reino” de los gonds, donde la magia
y las relaciones sociales rigen los imaginarios de los diamantes en ese lugar particular. Se argumenta que las
imaginaciones de los diamantes y su miner
ıa por mineros ind
ıgenas de Panna son configuradas a trav
es del
prisma de su particular historia regional, mito, geograf
ıa y cultura. Sin fe en la autoridad restrictiva de la cien-
cia, el capital y el estado, rehusando la domesticaci
on, los mineros cavan, contrabandean y se la gastan con
todo gusto. Se mantienen din
amicos y confiados en sus ideas tradicionales de la suerte, la masculinidad y el

exito. Esta gente se obliga en v
ınculos con el trabajo y entre ellos mismos de modo que se excluya la posibilidad
de amasar fortuna individual y orientar la riqueza en modos que reafirmen a cada quien su dependencia en la
vida de minero. El argumento se ilustra con la historia del protagonista Ramu, que orgullosamente se gasta las
ganancias del gran diamante que se encontr
o. Con base en trabajo etnogr
afico de campo en Panna, en el Estado
de Madhya Pradesh, India central, este art
ıculo explora la magia de la miner
ıa artesanal de diamantes, muestra
c

omo esta miner
ıa es configurada por el lugar e indica c
omo a la vez la miner
ıa informal configura el contexto.
Palabras clave: ASM, Gond Adivasi, miner
ıa informal de diamantes, Panna en India central, reino.

Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 0(0) 2018, pp. 1–15 Ó 2018 by American Association of Geographers
Initial submission, September 2017; revised submission, December 2017; final acceptance, February 2018
Published by Taylor & Francis, LLC.
2 Lahiri-Dutt and Chowdhury
adshah, a merchant, appeared as if out of nowhere
B near the deep bed of the Qilqila River, where we
have been standing, watching Ramu, an indige-
nous Gond, digging the ground for diamonds. The Qil-
qila River drains the Vindhyan Mountains in central
India and flows through the forest-covered undulating
terrain to meet the Ken River, deep inside India. The
jungles along the river are designated protected or
reserved forests, where Gond tribes have traditionally
lived. The nearby Panna Tiger Reserve is bounded by
stone walls that are impossible for the deer to jump over.
For several weeks, we have been observing and learn-
ing about diamond mining in the region. Soon after we
expressed the desire to buy a piece of the lustrous, trans-
formed carbon mined locally, Badshah, the diamond
merchant, appeared at the Khinni ghat (riverbank) of
the Qilqila River. During transactions, Badshah did not
speak a word; instead, using his eyes and head, and with
slight movements of his fingers, he conveyed his
approval or disapproval. The “diamond trade always has
been a somewhat closed world in which different rules
applied”1 as if “time has come to a standstill” (van Dijck
2009, 749), but this was a new experience for those of
us who purchased commodities under different systems.
Jean Baptiste Tavernier,2 the French traveling
diamond trader who made six trips to India, would
have recognized the mysterious manner of transac-
tions. Roaming through India during the seven-
teenth century, he purchased diamonds from
merchants like Badshah who would “drive their
bargains” in absolute silence “without anyone say-
ing a word” (Ball 1889, 62). Tavernier visited all
four known diamond mines operating at that time
(Brewster 1852, 108). An English translation of his
descriptions of the silent transactions reads:
The buyer and the seller sit one before another like two
tailors, and the one of the two opening his girdle, the
seller takes the right hand of the purchaser, and covers
his own hand and that with his girdle; under which, in
the presence of many merchants that meet together in
the same hall, the bargain is secretly driven without the
knowledge of any person. For then neither the purchaser
nor seller speak neither with their mouth nor eyes, but
only with the hand. (Brewster 1852, 104)
During Tavernier’s visits, India was the “cradle” of dia-
monds, and “Indian diamond mines were the only
known working diamond mines in the world”
(Hofmeester 2013, 27). Crider’s (1924) authoritative
work on the story of the precious stone noted that
India was “the natural home of the diamond” (176).
The region in which diamonds were found was vast,
extending over the Indian subcontinent. Tavernier’s
detailed description of how diamonds were mined can
be found in the North British Review (NBR) (104):
Round about the place where the diamonds are found,
the ground is sandy, full of rocks, much resembling the
parts near Fontainebleau. There are in the rocks several
veins, some half a finger, some a whole finger, wide: And
the miner makes use of irons with hooks at the end, with
which they pick out the earth or sand, which they put
into tabs, and among that earth they find the diamonds.
But because those veins do not run always straight, but
sometimes down, sometimes upward, the miners are con-
strained to break the rock, following always the trace of
the veins: when they have opened all the veins, and
taken out all the sand, then they wash it two- or three
times over to look for the diamonds. (Ball 1889, 134)
During fieldwork, we found that aspects of diamond
mining and trade remain similar to this description.
Indigenous Gonds like Ramu and his kinsmen still
know “all the places where the diamonds grow,” as
Tavernier described (Ball 1889, 134), and dig the
ground in much the same manner.
We illuminate the transformation of this magical
world of diamonds in Panna through the eyes of the pro-
tagonist, Ramu. About forty years old, Ramu is a muscu-
lar Gondi man who in 2013 found a large diamond
weighing over fifteen carats, a rare find. Ramu’s parents
worked in the stone quarries nearby to supplement their
meager incomes from monsoon-dependent farming. The
job in such quarries is tough. Ramu gave up quarrying
work to search for diamonds full time after his big find.
He digs up rubble, or chaal, from near the riverbed, with
monsoon being the “better season” for work, as there is
plenty of water in the river. The chaal is washed several
times in square tanks (dona) and round pits (gadha) dug
into the ground, with the help of an iron sieve (channi),
after which it is spread on a square patch (khanna) to dry
and sort (machana). Ramu was sorting on a monsoon day
in July when, in his words, “the diamond appeared.” He
took the stone home and hid it for six days behind a
photo of the goddess Kali. The news spread like wildfire,
though; friends began to call on him, and the govern-
ment officials were watching him, pressing him to
declare the find to the diamond control of the Hirasha-
san3 office at the district headquarters in Panna. This
made national headlines, and diamond-bearing Panna
became the center of attention in India.
We return to Ramu’s story, but we first place Ramu’s
“big strike” against the backdrop of data. India produces
 Myth, Magic, and Modernity in the Diamond Tracts of Central India
an insignificant amount of rough diamonds, although
most diamonds produced and sold worldwide are proc-
essed there (Kapadia 1995). Janse’s (2007) estimate of
global diamond production since the start of mining
from primary deposits—“host rock mining”—shows
South Africa dominated global diamond production
until about 1930, when other African countries, partic-
ularly Congo/Zaire, began to export diamonds.4 Africa
remained the major supplier of diamond production
until around 1960, when Russia began mining dia-
monds to rise to the top.5 It appears that the current
surge in global diamond production is from new players
(e.g., Russia, Canada, and Australia) as well as
increased output from Botswana (Bain 2013).
Despite its reputation for cutting and polishing,6
India remains a very small producer, mining less than
34,000 carats in 2015; around 99 percent come from
the Panna area (Rao 2006). Simplistic logic explains
the decline: “The Panna diamond mines received a
considerable setback after the discovery of the very
rich diamond fields of South Africa in 1870” (Sinor
1930, 4). The view is unsophisticated because we
could see thriving diamond mining around Panna, sup-
porting seasonal or secondary income sources for many
people. How does one interpret the continued
vibrancy of informal diamond mining by locals like
Ramu? Does the indigenous Gond worldview of dia-
monds, expressed by our protagonist Ramu, offer us a
deeper understanding of local artisanal mining? We
answer these questions and show that India’s fall from
grace in global diamond production is linked to colo-
nial period establishment of the authority of scientific
geology. Stripped of patronage conventionally
received from the Mughal and other royalty, the magi-
cal value of diamonds transformed. Marginalization of
traditional knowledge on artisanal diamond mining by
the Gonds occurred in a realm that remains peripheral
to mainstream life in India.7
Studying the Realm of Artisanal Mining
The diamonds that Ramu digs are more than just a
mineral; they belong to the magical space that Gondis
live within. Modern scientific traditions (expressed,
for example, in the writings published in NBR [1853,
103]) critique these observations and “absurdities of
preceding writers” and argue that from these descrip-
tions “we obtain an insight into the low state of phys-
ics, chemistry, and medicine.” Davies (1984, 2–3)
suggested that these references do not necessarily
mean “diamonds as modern science knows it—as
3
carbons.” He conjectured that any “supernaturally
hard” shiny crystal could have been described as a dia-
mond. He conclusively said, “There is no convincing
connection between this adamas and modern-day dia-
mond” (3). Yet, the magic of diamonds is acknowl-
edged in legends that continue to circulate around
better known, big diamonds. The premodern and mys-
terious world of diamonds is linked to the ways in
which Ramu deals with luck and the sudden influx of
money and with his being a Gondi man and the sensi-
bilities that involves. Yet, Ramu is not entirely outside
of the modern world: He yielded to the Hirashasan
rules,8 uses a mobile phone, and is fully aware of the
material value of the stones he digs. Dealing with a
domain such as this invokes what Weiss (2002)
described as “ethnographies of globalization” (95) in
remote areas such as Gond villages in Panna, with cul-
tural norms that survive intact even through colonial-
ism and have become newly contested sites in the
global mineral trade. In these liminal spaces, awash
with foreign imagery, dynamic systems of social rela-
tions and exchange exist to bridge, reconcile, and aid
in navigating the space between global capital and
local values and beliefs.
Ramu is someone whose performative action of dia-
mond mining and whose reactions to the “big find”
must be placed within systems of social relations and
self-actualization. The realm therefore is not entirely a
conceptual space; that is, an abstract domain created
through interactions of a researcher and the marginal
(and gendered) participant in the research referred to
by Tsing (1993), although it does refer to the particu-
larity and the situated nature of field research. Our
research extended beyond archival material into pro-
longed ethnographic fieldwork in 2017; this article is
based on ethnographic methods contextualized in
place. For human geographers dealing with the kind of
exceptionalism, or particularities, of place, specificities
arising out of historical processes are informed by cul-
tures, societies, environments, political systems, and
individuals associated with local contexts (Rigg 2009).
Further, these relations include not only the physical
structures and objects in a location and its landscape
but also movement, interactions, sounds, smells, and
the “feel” or “vibe” as experienced by individuals;
“rather than space being viewed as a container within
which the world proceeds, space is seen as a co-product
of those proceedings” (Thrift 2004, 96). Following de
Certeau (1984, 117), the realm can be understood as
being “a practiced place.” Following Massey (2005),
we see the realm as a space of relational entanglement,
4 Lahiri-Dutt and Chowdhury
lively and dynamic, emphasizing the relations between
Ramu and his diamonds.
The particular realm, as the term is used here in the
more concrete sense, constitutes places recently arrived
onto “center-stage” (Duffy 2007) in global economic
systems because of a “mineralization” of economies (Bry-
ceson, Jønsson, and Sherrington 2010, 357). Examples
in the literature make this plain. Mineral extraction dis-
rupts long-lasting forms of interdependence (Bainton
2008); undermines traditional customs (Gr€atz 2009);
subverts loyalties of kin, ethnicity, and clan (Bryceson,
Jønsson, and Sherrington 2010); and provides rationales
for abandoning homelands (Diggins 2015). Importantly,
linkages between feelings of uncertainty and instability,
and how locals navigate them, define much literature on
liminal artisanal mining. Uncertainty has led to new dis-
plays of prowess and autonomy, new forms of financial
interdependence, and new engagements with the con-
cepts of luck, spirits, and the supernatural (Gamburd
2004; Duffy 2007; Hoffman 2011; D’Angelo 2015);
men, specifically, must be understood as operating in
spaces where daring is an agential act.
The collective space examined by scholars is one in
which traditionally agrarian society has rapidly
become a site of mineral excavation, leading to
increases in transient populations, peripheral econo-
mies of spirituality, prostitution, varying degrees of
lawlessness, and friction between new and old values
and beliefs. No theoretical framework for the interpre-
tation of such spaces seems stronger than Foster’s
(1999) hypermodernity, as expanded in Weiss’s
(2002) concept of inhabited fantasy. Globalization
“invites consideration of the experiences of people liv-
ing in particular localities when more and more of
their daily existence is understood and enacted with
reference to people in other localities, indeed, under-
stood, and enacted as if all these people lived in one
place at the same time” (Foster 1999, 148). Foster
(1999) used the term hypermodernity to refer to this
characteristically capitalist process of “time–space
compression,” where places are “always the contingent
outcome of . . . flows [of labor, capital, signs, ideas,
images, objects and people]” (143). This is not a pro-
cess in which locals are passive but one through which
they demonstrate resistance and aspiration. As Appa-
durai (quoted in Foster 1999) noted, such places are “a
complex nesting of imaginative appropriations [of the
sort] that are involved in the construction of agency in
a deterritorialized world” (145).
Weiss (2002) expounded this concept in the con-
text of appropriated imagery: “It is only when we shift
our attention from ubiquitous forms of globalized
imagery to the ways in which those forms are engaged
that we can begin to address the articulation of diverse
regional worlds and consider the production of locality
as part of the constitution of the global” (94). Where
artisanal mining is a driving force in redefinition of
social spaces, imagination comes to constitute reality.
Following “the loosening of bonds between people,
wealth, and territories” (Appadurai, quoted in Weiss
2002), “imaginative connections [are] required to
restore—albeit in an entirely invented fashion—once
present solidarities” (98).
Material ends implied in modernity, global market
expansion, and neoliberal capitalism are deployed in
Sierra Leone by diamond miners in combination with
real or imagined magical means, the occult, and kinds of
masculinity rooted in a specific context (D’Angelo
2014). The realms of magic and wealth production work
together in ways in which the magical becomes a meto-
nym for modernity (Roussea 2015). Local or habitual
ideational meanings are not necessarily overwhelmed in
the process but are renegotiated. De Boeck (1998) argued
that this is “first and foremost significant on the level of a
collective imaginary, desire and discourse which reflects
the deeply felt angst experienced by the subaltern in a
social reality that escapes or crushes him and that no lon-
ger seems to make sense” (788). Ramu’s diamond magic,
analyzed in the following section, exemplifies this.
Ramu’s Magical Diamonds
People believe that the value of diamond is in its
luster and size. Yet, diamonds remain shrouded in
magic, myths, and the occult and are attributed more-
than-special status, particularly by those looking for
them (D’Angelo 2014). Diamonds that Ramu digs
inhabit the realm of magic and myth. Water flowing
through the Qilqila River, Ramu says, used to be
undrinkable—so poisonous that if a cavalry horse
drank it, its rider would die—until one day in the mys-
terious past, the sage Prananath sat next to the Qilqila
and washed his toe to turn the water sweet and safe for
drinking. He then bestowed Raja Chattrasal, the Raj-
put king of the Bundela dynasty, with the ashirwad
(boon) of diamonds, who amassed enormous wealth
from diamond mines (see Jain 2002). Prananath is
associated with diamonds (Franklin 1833, 100); beside
the Qilqila stands his ancient temple where the flute
of the deity is decorated with diamonds found locally
from the river alluvium. The local Hindus see Prana-
nath as a budhha nishkalank avataar (the wise and the
 Myth, Magic, and Modernity in the Diamond Tracts of Central India
purest form) of Krishna, and the Muslims see him as
the last Mahdi Imam. Legend has it that Prananath is
the owner of all the diamonds in Panna. These are the
margins of religious orthodoxy, where secular myth
and magic of inter-faith amicability, syncretism, and
piety emerge (Sikand 2003). Diamonds metaphorically
emerge as flowers from that sacred soil drenched in the
magic of interfaith trust and intercommunity camara-
derie. They belong to, and are controlled by, this
mythical and imagined individual with magical
powers. In this phantasmagorical realm of Panna, the
spatial, material, cultural, and imaginative dimensions
of the local and the global as well as the particular and
universal intertwine to challenge the existing social,
political, and economic order (as observed elsewhere
by D’Angelo 2014).
Diamonds are sacred in Gond cosmology, situated
at its very center. Different narratives of communities
clamor over diamond ownership. These claims make
diamonds and the activity of mining them polyse-
mic—one that has various meanings—among the
communities inhabiting diamond tracts. At times,
these meanings are contentious and antithetical to
each other. This is significant because the realm is also
at the margins of mainstream Brahminical culture;
Ramu, like thousands of others before him, starts a
new dig by sacrificing a cow (or a goat). This idea of
consecrating diamond-bearing ground with blood,
Crooke ([1906] 1973, 135) conjectured, implies that
diamond mining was carried out primarily by non-
Hindus, who did not worship cows. The practice
points at a prehistory of “Aryanic” incursion in the
indigenous terrain and at conflicts arising out of own-
ership of natural resources, reflected in social and cul-
tural remembrance.
For centuries, people believed that diamonds were
like organisms; Crider (1924) said that Indians
believed that “diamonds grow like onions, and a new
crop appears every twenty or thirty years” (182). One
myth is that diamonds grow together as male and
female, are nourished by the evening dew, and bring
forth small children who grow throughout the year
(Davies 1984). Besides the myth that diamonds bring
luck, there is one that a diamond is poisonous and
risky if it does not suit someone. Possibly some myths
indicate the value of diamonds and the respect the
stone commanded and are intended to create an aura
of awe and amazement. Perhaps that is why, the myth
goes, a diamond will sweat if poison is brought near it,
to alert its wearer of impending danger to life. These
5
beliefs in the magical powers of diamonds are
enduring.
In Panna, one of the popular myths is about the
Raja Chattrasal, who sent out his cavalries to conquer
lands. Such was his name and fame that diamonds
appeared wherever the horses stepped foot. These
myths indicate the wealth that diamonds brought to
the Panna region. “In the year 1750, i.e., Raja
Chattrasal’s time, the duties and profits from the dia-
mond mines amounted to £40,000 per annum” (Sinor
1930, 3). Traces of this wealth can still be detected:
The entire area is dotted with grandiose and royal-
style havelis (mansions), mostly derelict but some still
inhabited by local landlords. Many believe that most
feudal landlords have a reservoir of diamonds in their
havelis. Raja Chattrasal defeated the Gond king of
Panna to acquire the diamond fields of this place and
made it the capital of his kingdom, as advised by Pra-
nanath, his spiritual and political guru. Prananath
knew that huge wealth was necessary in the initial
period of state formation in Panna (Jain 2002). The
slow defeat, disenfranchisement, and containment of
the Gonds under the precolonial and colonial state
have been mentioned by Bhukya (2013).
The colonial British held that central India was full of
troublesome and wild people difficult to administer; the
terrain overrun with wilderness and forests; the land bar-
ren, drought-affected, and uncultivable—and, hence,
uneconomic to govern—and best ruled through
“indirect” means (Bhukya 2013, 289). The princely state
of Panna was a remote, uneconomic, forest region—
despite its reputation for producing diamonds—the Brit-
ish felt, and they placed it under indirect rule, in alliance
with the Bundela decedents of Chattrasal.
The Panna region has always been prone to fre-
quent periodic droughts. The Gonds secure subsistence
by farming in the monsoon and procuring food from
the jungle for the rest of the year. To maintain liveli-
hood in the drought–flood cycle, Gonds used mining
as a fallback option. Under Bundela rule, Gond tribals
during droughts and famines brought the rulers channis
(baskets) full of diamonds and took jowar and other
cereals in return. The exchange value of diamonds was
clearly greater than their use value during hard times.
Hoffmeester (2013), in research about the Mughal
empire, argued the tradition of gift-giving was a means
for rulers to display power over their subjects; in
conjecturing, the Gonds, powerless under changing
rulers and in a hostile environment, responded by giv-
ing diamonds to assert their personhood.
6 Lahiri-Dutt and Chowdhury
Elwin (1936), on the importance of magic in
Gond’s lives, described the myth of their origin from a
single ancestor: “Railinga . . . was born, a perfect child,
from a flower, a diamond in his navel and sandal on
his forehead” (16). Elwin noted while in the region,
“So Panda Baba lives in his little tumbledown mud
hut, so full of magic, among the forest-covered hills of
the Maikal Range. . . .” With scientific reasoning, he
explained the magic and dependence on nature as a
“mud-hut philosophy” that instructs the Gonds to
“face poverty and disease, frustration and disaster with
unwearied courage. . . . A gay freedom of spirit . . . and
simplicity of heart” (27). Mukherjee (1944) exercised
more caution in explaining the remarkable role of
magic in the Gond way of life but returned to eco-
nomic interpretation by noting that these roles
“change with economic evolution”: “There is logic
behind the magic that is currently applied to organize
and regulate intensive economic efforts and ensure
their results. Thus magic becomes in indispensable
tool of economic adaptation” (i). This economic
explanation explains the Gonds’ movements between
diamond mining and farming but does not explain
Ramu’s behavior following his big strike. Singh (1944)
commented on the “structural organization” (41) of
labor and the well-defined regulation of economic
activities within a scheme of periodicity and the “both
simple and complex form” of division of labor between
women and men (114).
The Gonds remain marginalized even to local main-
stream society. Although by 1900 much land was
taken up by jagirdars or landlords, the British passed in
1916 the Central Provinces Land Alienation Act to
stop expropriation of Gondi land. The Act was revised
in 1939 to allow “transferability” of land (Patel 1998).
Also, the state-enclosed forests and jungles—and in
the postcolonial period the growing power of the forest
department, which conserves forests and the famous
Panna Tiger Reserve—gradually marginalized Gonds
in their own territory. Stone quarries in the area were
declared to be inside reserve forest area and closed
down. As the jungles became “protected” and sources
of wage incomes disappeared, what was a fallback
option for the Gonds turned into the primary means of
livelihood.9 Ramu, for example, no longer owns any
farming land, describes himself as bhumiheen (land-
less), and spends all of his time digging for diamonds.
This marginalization in phases, from precolonial
times to recent years that alienated the Gonds from
mainstream life,10 means that the Gonds were disen-
franchised. Waves of farmers from mainstream Hindu
castes migrated in Panna, mostly from Gujarat and
Maharashtra, during colonial and postcolonial periods.
These farmers carry out mining and farming in a com-
plementary manner, operating small-scale mines with
leases from the Madhya Pradesh diamond mining and
governing department, Hirashasan. The central gov-
ernment brought in the state-controlled mineral pro-
ducer, the National Mineral Development
Corporation, to mine the Majhgawan diamond pipe,
in a mechanized large-scale operation11 (Coulson
2012). This incursion of state, capital, and mechanized
and scientific mining intrudes into the Gondi realm
through extreme “infrastructural power” (described by
Mann 1984). These are virile powers of modernity,
penetrating with the perceived certainty of scientific
geology, but are antithetical to the Gondi realm of
magic, myth, and jouissance derived from uncertainties
of artisanal mining, in effect, disenchanting it.
Understanding Ramu’s Realm
Risk permeates every aspect of the miner’s life, from
the choice to be a miner, to the act of mining, to the
way money earned through mining is spent. Mining is
incredibly speculative, especially in contexts where
even to choose to mine is to reject traditional customs
(Walsh 2003; Bryceson, Jønsson, and Sherrington
2010). An inherent aspect of any gemstone mining is
uncertainty, and scientific geology aims to reduce asso-
ciated risks.
Artisanal miners like Ramu are not beyond feel-
ings of uncertainty and instability and continually
struggle to navigate them. Uncertainty has led to
new displays of prowess, masculinity, and autonomy;
new forms of financial interdependence; and new
engagement with concepts of luck, spiritual value,
and supernatural will (Gamburd 2004; Duffy 2007).
Men specifically must be understood as operating in
spaces where daring is an act of agency. Miners sub-
ject their bodies to extreme conditions reminiscent
of rites of initiation, often considering that death is
a fair and natural trade-off in pursuit of riches (De
Boeck 2001). As Gr€atz (2009) noted of West Afri-
can gold miners, gold is not reliably available,
changes in gold prices are beyond their control,
robberies are common, and state intervention is
always a possibility; so, miners exploit intensively,
“regardless of environmental damage or safety
issues” (14). This usually being the case, the choice
to mine and ways in which mining is carried out
 Myth, Magic, and Modernity in the Diamond Tracts of Central India
include the conscious means for men to show inde-
pendence. Where daring is an active response to
risk, miners culturally reframe risk as challenge
(Gr€atz 2009), thus taking control of their destinies.
The idea that money serves unique social functions,
and is imbued by its handlers with properties dependent
on its origins, is ubiquitous in literature on liminal arti-
sanal and small-scale mining. Wealth is “underpinned
and shaped by local rural modes, conceptions, and cate-
gories of wealth, accumulation, expenditure, physical
and social reproduction and well-being which originate
in . . . (pre)colonial moral matrixes, attitudes, practices,
and beliefs” (De Boeck, quoted in Walsh 2003, 291).
Money earned through high-risk or exploitative work is
often thought to have to be spent soon. Malagasy min-
ers call such money “hot” (Walsh 2003); Sri Lankan
outmigrants say “it burns” (Gamburd 2004); in West
Africa it can be both “hot and bitter” (Werthmann
2003; Luning 2009; Som
e 2013); and the idea that one
must “kill” or “eat” such money before it “dies” or
breeds evil in your life is rife (Walsh 2003; Gamburd
2004). How money becomes this way varies. It might
be feelings of shame that come with being exploited or
from being looked down on by those who pay (Gam-
burd 2004) or a form of resistance to national or West-
ern cultural norms like the household (Walsh 2003).
Ascription to money of such characteristics reflects
older beliefs and new forms of resistance, resulting in
shared and individual conspicuous consumption, for the
interlinked and mutually reinforcing purposes of dis-
playing prowess and sharing wealth.
The idea of the man as a hunter, warrior, or “big
man” plays a role in men’s decision to burn wealth in a
conspicuous, carefree manner. Ramu is not a leader, but
his conspicuous spending becomes a rebuke and refuta-
tion of such authority and a shortcut to a fleeting imita-
tion of it (as noted by Duffy 2007). In his view,
diamonds, gold, money, and all wealth are “wild,” mak-
ing him the man who hunts, tames, and takes possession
of it and uses it without regard for its passing, a man of
status and power (De Boeck 1998). Pursuit of money is
reconceptualized to fit the traditional narrative of the
hunter (De Boeck 2001); even the nineteenth-century
American frontier (Walsh 2003) and present-day
American hip-hop (Weiss 2002) are images deployed
in updating this narrative. This savage quality of money
means that it makes one “mad” (Gr€atz 2009), which
becomes a rationale for reckless spending and behavior
that isolates spenders, even as it appears to elevate
them (De Boeck 1998). This elevation is central to
understanding that the elevated man is best placed to
7
share wealth. Miners’ money, and its expenditure, is
tied to reproducing loyalties in ways similar to the tradi-
tions that miners appear to be challenging and that are
seen as essential to continued good fortune. The idea
that a man who does not spend his money on others is
ill-fated or unwelcome is ever-present, and the act of
spending becomes a means of risk minimization and
cost sharing (Bainton 2008; Bryceson, Jønsson, and
Sherrington 2010). Where relationships are fleeting, it
is commonplace for transient miners to reproduce social
relations through “acts of common consumption rather
than common investment” (Walsh 2003, 293). De
Boeck (1998) noted the formation of interdependent
mining “stables” of men, similar to kin-based networks,
“in which redefined rules of solidarity, mutual reci-
procity, and distribution of wealth apply” (798). De
Boeck showed that the traditional belief that a wise
man shares his wealth carries on, only now this takes
the form of sharing beer, buying consumer goods, rack-
ing up debt in clubs, and visiting prostitutes, or “eating”
women (Duffy 2007). To keep one’s money would turn
it “bitter”; to spend a large sum on a house would be to
trap that bitterness in a material form. This results in
“the simultaneous realization of two stereotypes: that of
the antisocial, individualistic, daring, and irresponsible
young man, and that of the social, deliberative, collec-
tive-oriented, and responsible elder” (Walsh 2003,
297). In either case, the man’s imminent poverty is
assured. This interpretation seems more appropriate for
Ramu because he did not spend his money in a carefree
manner but spent it for his relatives to prove himself as
the big man.
Although this might seem to disadvantage miners,
their agency cannot be dismissed. Miners assert power
over and resistance to hegemonic Western and tradi-
tional power structures, which would domesticate
them (D’Angelo 2015). As Diggins (2015) noted,
“The very concept of a ‘free market’ can, in some cir-
cumstances, become an ideological aspiration, typi-
cally entangled with ideals about individual freedom,
personal expression and the potential (at least) for
social mobility” (321). For all of their labor and profli-
gacy, miners are in control. The money that miners
make is used in ways that clash with traditional values,
even as customary notions of good and evil inform per-
ceptions of money and affect its treatment (Bryceson,
Jønsson, and Sherrington 2010). The way miners treat
wealth is a habitual-imaginative practice drawing
improvisationally on sharing of risk, extending the
daring of miners into the realm of rejection of societal
norms. Weary with uncertainties of mining, and about
8 Lahiri-Dutt and Chowdhury
their own masculinity and morality, miners invent spi-
rits, who are shady, like them, and are neither good
nor bad but colorful, such as the “devil” or “Uncle
Tio,” worshipped by Bolivian tin miners, and who
looks like a bearded apparition (Taussig 1980).
Scientific Geology Disenchants Magic
When diamonds inhabit the magical realm, it
becomes difficult for scientific knowledge to under-
stand them. The advent of modern scientific knowl-
edge in India during the British colonial occupation
propagated marginalization of indigenous worldviews.
“[The] concept of science was closely related to the
needs of the empire,” and scientific knowledge was the
“effective instrument” of colonization and control by a
mercantilist empire that treated science as important
for generating profit (Kumar 1995, 63). The kind of
scientific knowledge propagated in India was, how-
ever, after a brief phase looking for Indian sources and
systems, imported from Europe. How the colonial Brit-
ish brought to India scientific ideas about landscapes,
rocks, and plants has also been analyzed by Arnold
(2005), who suggested that India’s incorporation into
“the tropics” was one of the ways of defining its
“otherness” from Europe, as a sweeping act of erasure
and identity formation. This was accomplished
through propagating forms of knowledge in the areas
of science, a colonial epistemology that rejected indig-
enous knowledge systems. India was extensively sur-
veyed and mapped to a degree matched in few other
British colonies. Surveying and cartographic precision,
elaborate identification, and classification produced
detailed knowledge purely utilitarian in purpose. Yet,
the emergence of natural sciences as the fashioner of
colonial knowledge often stressed the inadequacies—
in mineral wealth, for example—to underline contra-
diction of this imagined tropical world with the world
colonizers were familiar with. MacLeod and Kumar
(1995) differentiated between, on the one hand, Brit-
ish civilians interested in local knowledge systems
and, on the other, engineer administrators who
brought universal technical knowledge for its applica-
tion in India.
When knowledge of diamonds and mining was wan-
ing in India, such knowledge continued evolving in
Europe through experimentation, which continually
changed how diamonds were perceived. For example,
Newton’s study of light involved diamonds, and he
concluded that diamonds are “probably an unctuous
substance coagulated” (Davies 1984, 14). Subsequent
experiments by European scientists to determine the
characteristics of diamonds gradually led to the con-
sensus by the early nineteenth century that diamonds
predominantly were formed of carbon; this remains
the basis of the principles of artificial diamonds being
made today (Ali 2016).
Tavernier’s visits to India occurred at a time
when interest was growing in Europe in diamonds
as a mysterious and rare material of considerable
value. Until the eighteenth century, merchants
commissioned miners to dig diamonds in parts of
India (Mukund 1991). Traditional gemstone cutting
and polishing technology continued (Rajan and
Athiyaman 2004). Jewelry ownership remained a
basic means of displaying wealth and status in
Indian social life (Biswas 1994; Khalid 2015).
Panna, as the primary producing area, supplied
much of these diamonds. In a description of dia-
mond mining in Panna state, Sinor (1930) wrote:
One thing which stands out pre-eminently above all
others from the records and the observations of the previ-
ous visitors to the Panna diamond mines is that the dia-
mond mining industry must have been very profitable in
the olden times and that mining was conducted on an
extensive scale . . . [and] that the state obtained a hand-
some income from the diamond mining industry. (1–2)
In 1827, sixty years before the use of the word Kimber-
lite,12 Captain J. Franklin officially “reported” the exis-
tence of diamonds in Panna (Halder and Ghosh
1981). Initially, rocks around Panna were known to be
of the same type, until they were reclassified as
Orangeite (Ravi Shankar, Nag, and Rawat 2002).
Wadia’s (1966) opinion was that two diamond-bearing
horizons occur within Upper Vindhyan rocks of cen-
tral India: “one of these is in Panna region occurring
as a thin conglomerate-band” (12). This conglomerate
is locally known as muddha; diamonds occur in this
sandstone matrix (Burton 1879). In Majhgawan, how-
ever, he also recognized in situ deposits that resemble
the Kimberlites of South African diamond fields.
Chatterjee and Rao (1995) considered this rock to be
“a specific type of Kimberlite” (178) and called it
Majhgawanite, which intrudes the Lower Vindhyan
Super Ground of rocks in the Panna area. Rao (2006)
suggested that the specific nature of Majhgawan dia-
mondiferous pipes is still not clearly understood. It
becomes apparent that geologists were ambivalent
about diamond deposits in India; differences in opin-
ions varied with time and about almost everything:
 Myth, Magic, and Modernity in the Diamond Tracts of Central India
source rocks, extent of the area from which diamonds
are found, and their value.
The Geological Survey of India, established in 1851
by the East India Company (Sarkar 2016), had keen
interest searching for diamonds. Their geologists, how-
ever, thought that diamonds were primarily alluvial in
nature and spread over large areas in river deltas and
found it particularly difficult to find a singular source
of diamond-bearing rock (Radhakrishna 2007). Later
geologists such as Fareeduddin and Sawakar (2012)
considered two practical reasons as primarily responsi-
ble for decline of the “strange but strong bond between
India and diamond” (3). One was the occurrence of
diamonds as secondary deposits over a large area that
did not lend itself to the centralized, industrial mining
that colonial British were interested in establishing.
The other was decline in the knowledge of diamonds,
due to a singular focus on Kimberlites as the only pos-
sible source rock. One can add to this the local con-
text: the forested nature of the tract, its inaccessibility,
and its general neglect by the colonial rulers, who
ruled through native princes.
Globally, the approach to the knowledge of dia-
monds changed as scientists busied themselves dispel-
ling myths around diamonds to find one single source
rock that would undoubtedly prove that the stones
were nothing but a material substance; yet, diamonds
could never be fully understood or controlled. Efforts
arriving at a common system of weighing the stone,
for example, did not succeed at once; the carat,13 the
standardized measure, came from the Greek word for
the dried seed of a “locust pod” tree, keration (Davies
1984, 8–9). The weight of the carat is “never the same
everywhere, though” (Davies 1984, 9). In Panna, the
weight rati has been used since time immemorial, but
its value (197 mg) varies from that in Madras (now
Chennai, 207 mg). In 1871, French traders, through
their Syndicate de la Bijonterie, pushed to standardize
the weight. In 1907, an internationally accepted
weight of the carat—200 mg or the “metric carat”—
was accepted by the International Committee on
Weights and Measures. This scientific realm of moder-
nity, backed by state and mining capital, slowly dis-
placed the magical realm of Gondi miners.
Ramu’s “Big Strike”
Ramu spoke with us while sorting out diamonds
from his chaal dug out from the Qilqila River, on a
small patio (about 100 ft2), which he had cleared and
9
flattened with cow dung. This is Khanna, where he
leveled the chaal to search for and pick the stones. For
us, the chaal, including the rough diamonds, looks
most ordinary. It needs years of experience to identify
diamonds in the rubble, which looks like ordinary
gravel. The diamonds he generally finds are mostly
very small; stones larger than a carat are rare. When
we met him, Ramu had found only small diamonds.
He describes pebbles of rock diamonds as kaccha (raw
or immature) and pebbles of ancient rocks as pakka
(solid or mature). The kaccha diamonds are of no value
and “brittle” to him, whereas he thinks that the pakka
pebbles have transformed to become solid hard dia-
monds. About the tedious process of searching, wait-
ing for the diamond to show up within the chaal,
Ramu said the task is just like “gehun sukhana and
chalna” (drying and sorting wheat), but using the hands
and eyes to sort diamonds is not meaningless: “The
diamond looks different, once you see it [many times]
you know, and the stone calls out loudly to tell me
‘Look brother, I am here! Please pick me up.’” Every
day, before work, he worships the chaal with flowers
and incense sticks with the hope of finding a big dia-
mond that day.
Ramu does not have a license from the Hirashasan
office in Panna, because he feels that “ye toh nadi ka
jameen hain” (the land belongs to the river). The forest
department has taken over the land near the Qilqila
River, so the government no longer gives a license to
mine it. Currently, there are not more than 300 people
digging for diamonds; formerly, there were many more.
According to him, the forest used to be far away but
now the area of forest has been extended; the forest is
slowly engulfing the land and taking away their work.
Ramu worked in a number of khadans (stone quar-
ries) for twenty years under individual quarry owners.
Earlier, he mined for diamonds during his free time—
particularly during the monsoons, when stone quarries
are flooded—but for the past nine years he has been
digging for diamonds full time. He says working in
stone quarries owned by someone else does not pay
well; according to the local informal labor hiring sys-
tem, 50 percent of the money earned is the lease own-
er’s commission. Laborers bring their own tools and
pay all expenses (e.g., for daily meals and medication).
They are paid Rs 100 (about US$1.50) a day but, after
covering all costs, are left with no more than Rs 20
(about US$0.30). Moreover, payment is irregular and
only weekly. Ramu, unhappy with this system, wanted
to be his own master, so he started his own diamond
quarry along the banks of the Qilqila River. Gradually,
10 Lahiri-Dutt and Chowdhury
he increased the time spent mining diamonds and one
day found the fifteen-carat diamond.
We spoke in detail about the day he found the big
diamond. When we asked where he found it, he
proudly pointed into the distance and said, “There,
next to the river, beside that tall tree.” Further, he
said: “It was during the monsoons, I got the stone in
afternoon at around 1 p.m. I had already taken my
lunch. It was a Thursday, I remember that very
clearly.” Of that magic moment, he said, “I was digging
for hours, and thought, the soil seems rather different
today!” Then he started to sort the chaal. About to
wash a part of it, he suddenly saw the diamond. It was
shining; it was roundish, kind of an oval shape. He
picked up a stone and said, “Just like this, as big as this
stone.” We asked what he did when he picked up the
diamond. Did he tell others? Ramu smiled and said,
“No, I quietly hid it in my dhoti (loincloth) and took it
home. I kept it hidden, wrapped in a small puriya
(paper wrap) behind a photo of mother goddess Kali in
my home for six days. Nobody would know such a
secret place.” Ramu was delighted and told his family
members about the good fortune.
Others from the village came to know and “unhone
halla kar diya” (they started talking), and “har taraf
charcha ho gayi thi” (now everybody was talking about
it). His friends started calling. As his quarrying was
illegal, he quickly took a small lease from the Hira
Karyalay office in Panna. Then, he deposited the stone
to the diamond office in Panna to legalize it. At gov-
ernment auction it was sold for Rs 18.44 lakhs (about
US$27,500); after paying royalty, Ramu received a
check for Rs 16.04 lakhs (about US$23,940) from the
mines and mineral departments of Panna, which he
deposited into his bank account.
We spoke at length with Ramu about what he did
with the money. He started by saying: “Uski kahani to
bahut kharab hai” (that part of the story is very bad).
That money was gone in a year. Here is the story in
his words:
The story goes like this. After I deposited the stone,
because it was a big one and the price was high, nobody
bought it in the auctions and it took about a year to
finally sell the stone. In the meantime, I continued my
diamond mining but with a loan of Rs 2 lakhs [about
US$3,000], so before even the diamond was sold I was in
a debt of, with interest, of Rs 2.75 lakh [about
US$4,100]. Then I gave the sacrifice of a goat to the cha-
butara of Asmani mata [the goddess]. I also arranged for
keertan [soirees of devotional song] in praise of the God-
dess and offered bhandara [feast] for the whole village.
There were some expenses there. Then again I arranged
for another Puja in Sharda mata temple in kacheri [court]
and in all these I spent around Rs 75,000 [about
US$1,200]. I bought a bike for Rs 60,000 [about
US$1,120]. By that time, I had spent a total of around Rs
4.10 lakhs [about US$6,120]. Then I offered one lakh
rupees [about US$1,500] each to my two brothers. The
younger one took the money but the older one said if
you give me money I will spend it; rather give me a trac-
tor with which I can do some farming. That was his
dream, so I decided to buy an old tractor through my
friend who sold me an old tractor for Rs. 2 lakhs [about
US$3,000]. I also bought some land for him. Within a
few days, the front wheel of the tractor broke. Seeing all
these, my elder brother fell sick. I thought that he is in a
state of a mental shock, so asked him, “What do you
want?” He said, “Give me a new tractor please,” so I
went back to return the old one to the original seller and
took a new one for another Rs 3 lakhs [about US$4,500].
However, within a year nothing was left of it because my
neighbors and other villagers stole various parts of it.
The little cash I still had in the bank was gone to repair
that tractor. Then I sold the tractor and the land also,
because the land was faraway and unproductive.
About the tractor incident, he thinks that there could
be two reasons: Either “I got the evil eye of others” or
“it is possible that the iron did not suit me.” His elder
brother and mother died, leaving only him. He said,
“Us hira se mano nazarsi lag gayi hamare parivaar ko”
(take it that diamond was probably cursed as it finished
our family). Although the story is “very bad,” Ramu is
nonchalant about the fact that he lost the money the
diamond brought: “It [the diamond] came and she is
gone in a year. Now I am searching for her again.
Everything happened because the diamond kept on
tantalizing me.”
Then he smiles and says, “But I will definitely get the
diamond. It will come, it is ‘playing’ with me.” He feels
that way because “I did not drink or blow the money
away on prostitutes and I am not sorry for the loss of it.”
The story of the tractor and the unproductive land is
the crucial point in Ramu’s narrative; it reveals a para-
dox, that of the conscious miner who has lost every-
thing despite his attempts of investing money in
familial activities (not in drinking but in agriculture) or
relations (he did not spend money on prostitutes but on
his brothers). It begs the question: How did he lose
everything? The stereotype of miners as gamblers does
not help us understand the forms of structural violence
and endemic poverty that disrupted Ramu’s dreams of
being and of making other people around him happy
(see more on this in D’Angelo 2015).
 Myth, Magic, and Modernity in the Diamond Tracts of Central India
From excerpts of our conversations with Ramu, sev-
eral things become clear. By not “saving for rainy
days,” by not building assets or spending in ways to
ensure a “better” future, Ramu treats the sudden influx
of money and his fortune very differently than most
other miners described in the literature. One can
explain this as a personal trait, which remains true as
well, but there is also a need to explain this as a gener-
ally prevalent worldview among the Gonds. Ramu
considers himself lucky, but his sense of luck has a
moral element, which makes it different from practical
rationality and utilitarianism. For example, it was not
the amount of money that influenced how he spent it;
on the contrary, the imagination of abundance and
conviction in his ability to strike it big again (and
again) were more crucial. We found his self-assurance
and “no regrets” attitude remarkable. Ramu either
works alone or hires a woman to fetch water from the
river for washing the rubble. His wife never works
with him, for Ramu has ascribed her place at home.
Ramu offers an important lesson to those attempting
to counteract the randomness of life: He shows that we
are all at the mercy of luck. For artisanal miners like
Ramu, who often (problematically) see their acts as a
gamble, the acts of spending (and consumption) play
important functions. The other factor is the highly
speculative nature of artisanal mining in general and
mining for diamonds in particular. No matter how
much scientific geological knowledge one has, one must
ultimately, inevitably submit to luck. What can make a
difference are intangibles like intuition, spiritual beliefs,
or faith in magic. These shape interactions between
miners, the material commodities they look for, and the
particular place that constitutes the realm. Windfall
gains from diamonds come and go, but Ramu carries on
mining, regardless, to lure the diamonds. Consequently,
the rush for diamonds never ends; for people like Ramu,
it becomes an emotional rush, a need driven by factors
located in the particularities of the place.
Conclusion: The Rush That Never Ends
Scientific geology is still unclear about diamond sour-
ces in India, as experts are never confident about the
amounts held in the Orangeites as against the Kimber-
lites. Meanwhile, Ramu carries on mining in the man-
ner described by Tavernier, and Badshah appears, out of
nowhere, to make sense of the diamonds he finds, as
winds of change sweep through the environmental,
political, and economic fabric of Panna.
11
Ramu is the protagonist of this story, but experien-
ces of miners inhabiting the fringe cannot be homoge-
nized. Discontinuities in values and knowledge and
contested rights to resources “generate distinctive
local ways of accessing mineral resources, associated
with particular forms of mining organization, power
relations, exploitative relationships, and collective
ways of expressing grievances” (Fisher 2008, 200).
Nevertheless, pursuit and deployment of mineral
resources like diamonds (and the money they bring)
locate the subjects of this article in the habitual-imagi-
native realm best appreciated through the affective
lens of inhabited fantasy, or magic. This realm is the
product of the active capturing of space by subalterns,
whose agency must be acknowledged. Miners like
Ramu, with their faith in the magic of diamonds, reter-
ritorialize space and renew conventional understand-
ing of accumulation. Miners like Ramu—marginalized
by restrictive big powers such as states, mining capital,
and modern science and rejecting domestication—dig,
smuggle, and spend for the savoir vivre. They remain
dynamic and reinvent traditional ideas of luck, initia-
tion, manhood, and success, seeking and treating
wealth in a manner that appears incoherent and waste-
ful. Even as they bond themselves to work and to each
other in ways that preclude the possibility of amassing,
consolidating, and directing wealth in ways that will
break their dependence on the miner’s life, they do so
to assert control, being proud to “eat” and “kill”
money, even as their behavior is scorned.
We also receive a refined idea of diamonds and real-
ize that the precious stone is not only a material of car-
bon. It is also a material that embodies magic, human
values, and worldviews like that of Ramu. There is no
distinct chasm between either the physical substance
or the material developed over millions of years and
the nontangibles developed over many generations or,
for that matter, no clear-cut division between the per-
ception of diamonds in premodern cultures and mod-
ern scientific views. The continued preference for
diamonds in modern society as the harbinger of good
luck indicates that the diamond belongs to a realm
where tradition and modernity are enmeshed.
As diamond mining by the Gonds in Panna shows,
modernity—descended into central India through sci-
entific studies of nature and rocks during the colonial
period—created a remarkable disjuncture in the his-
tory of diamonds. Scientific studies of the earth and
colonial mining capital decided which parts of the
environment are of value. This is a functional
appraisal of nature, in which it is reduced to being
12 Lahiri-Dutt and Chowdhury
merely a provider of “resources” useful to us. British
geologists exploring the terrain did not value Indian
diamond deposits as useful resources. This lack of
appreciation is linked to an overall neglect of the cen-
tral Indian region; British colonial rulers did not con-
sider the region of great use and left it largely under
local rulers. Did the indigenous Gonds value diamonds
as marketable commodities? As they exchanged dia-
monds for food during drought years, one can say that
they found food more valuable in the sense we com-
monly use the term value.
Ramu’s story shows that he appreciates the market
value of diamonds, although perhaps not in a way
common in mainstream society. The question then
arises: How do the Gonds value diamonds? The answer
is neither simple nor straightforward. On the one
hand, the Gonds continue to dig for diamonds, so they
do value the stones. Diamonds have no use value to
the Gonds, however, although they have exchange
value; “diamond” implies money and has a purpose.
On the other, people like Ramu, even when they
make a significant find, spend the monies considering
a complex network of ethical ideas and moral duties
outside of modern conceptualizations of asset forma-
tion. The very fact that for generations Gonds contin-
ued digging for diamonds suggests that diamonds and
their mining remain an important part of their lives.
The Gonds trade diamonds, perhaps getting enough
money to feed the village for a daughter’s wedding but
presenting irrefutable evidence of their engagement
with the market, albeit differently than the practices
of trade in the global diamond industry.
Ramu’s attitude illuminates a significant gap in con-
temporary understanding of the mineral-dependent
livelihoods of the poor in the Global South. The body
of policy-oriented literature takes for granted that arti-
sanal mining will lead to asset formation and provide a
pathway out of poverty. Yet, as we saw in Ramu’s case,
three years after his big find he has remained in exactly
the same place, still digging, hoping to strike yet
another big diamond. To him, the fact that the entire
windfall was spent without building any new assets
was immaterial; more important to him is his faith in
himself, his cooperation with the rest of his commu-
nity, and his hope for the future. Digging for him is a
sport, a way of life, and connection with his soil and
his community, a fight to unite the fragmented Gondi
world and his source of enchantment in a modern dis-
enchanted world and, at the same time, a livelihood.
We tend to believe that the total amount of money
available at one point in time influences how money is
spent. Through Ramu’s case, though, we can see that
other factors—the perception of abundance or his
masculinity—primarily influence how he used the for-
tune. The acts of spending and consumption serve
vital functions in the lives of artisanal miners like
Ramu. They see the mining as a gamble but not neces-
sarily in a negative sense. Under any circumstances,
diamond mining is speculative; miners display positive
attitudes to uncertainties in their search for diamonds.
Under the state in precolonial, colonial, and mod-
ern times, and in association with mining capital and
modern geological science, Gonds lost their diamonds
and digging fields through layers of disenfranchise-
ment. Now, they inhabit interstitial spaces of mining
capital and fringes of the state and mock at both
through this subversive “eating” and “killing” of
money as opposed to its thrift, accumulation, and rein-
vestment. It is not as if they do not value money, but
they value it for a purpose (moral, immoral, social, or
otherwise); that purpose is intensely linked with their
understanding of the rapidly transforming world and
how they want to exist in that unpleasant and gory
world. On the one hand, the modern state, its scien-
tific realm, and capital disenchant them and transmog-
rify their life-world; on the other hand, these miners
create new myths, spells, magic, and masculinity in
their intimate encounters with diamonds, mining capi-
tal, the market, and the modern state, thus asserting
their agentic capability and rights to remain
enchanted forever.
The Gond child is no longer born with a diamond
in its navel; by a series of historical appropriations, the
diamond has become external to the Gond cosmology.
Yet, Ramu goes on digging to “encounter and interro-
gate the diamond” again and again, to reappropriate it
and reposition it in the navel of Gond cosmology, thus
reunifying the fragmented Gondi life-world. Yet, the
capricious diamond remains elusive to him and unites
with the capitalist production system, leaving Ramu
only with a handful of cash, which he “eats” and “kills”
with great swag, and digs again. The rush continues.
Acknowledgments
The fieldwork would not have been possible with-
out the assistance of Yousuf Beg, the leader of Prithvi
Trust, working for years to improve the well-being of
quarry labor. We received extremely helpful insights
into the Gondi life-world through Ramu’s eyes; thanks
go to Ramu for sharing his story with us. Mr. Ashley
 Myth, Magic, and Modernity in the Diamond Tracts of Central India
Thomson helped us by carrying out some literature
review pertaining to artisanal and small-scale mining.
We also thank Professor Amalendu Jyotishi of Amrita
University for sharing valuable historical documents.
Funding
We thank the Australian Research Council for its
grant (Project ID: DP130104396), “Beyond the
Resource Curse: Charting a Path to Sustainable Liveli-
hoods for Mineral-Dependent Communities.”
ORCID
Arnab Roy Chowdhury http://orcid.org/0000-
0001-6626-3936
Notes
1. van Dijck (2000) went on: “Until recently, bargains
were often not clinched on paper, but by exclamations
of the word Mazzel!, freely translated as Good luck!,
and in the context of business to be understood as I
take your word for it, indicating that business alliances
are based in trust, backed by family ties, long-standing
friendships or other means of social control” (74).
2. Unless stated, references to Tavernier are to the trans-
lation by Valentine Ball from the original French into
English and published in London in 1889.
3. The term Hirashasan translates as “disciplining the dia-
monds” but actually signifies a set of rules made by the
state government of Madhya Pradesh for governing dia-
mond mining. The officer in control of the office is called
the Hira Adhikari and the office is known as Hira Karyalay.
4. Which country is dominant depends on whether the
metric is carats or value, as the relation between the
two metrics is nonlinear. Bigger diamonds are valued
disproportionately.
5. Until 1993, total global diamond production was
around 2.5 billion carats or 500 tonnes, and for the
next twenty years, output was 2.7 billion carats (see
Statista 2017).
6. See Kimberley Process (2017) for more details.
7. A visit to https://www.youtube.com/watch
?vDf0T2EBShIek&tD295s will familiarize the readers
with the realm discussed here.
8. The Mines and Minerals Department of the state gov-
ernment of Madhya Pradesh and its rules regarding dia-
mond mining.
9. According to Director of Prithvi Trust Yousuf Beg, the
banks of the Qilqila River near Khinni ghat were also
declared property of the forest department.
10. This is seen in Odisha, where the Khond Adivasi
domain and their relation with mineral-rich terrain of
colored gemstones were marginalized by the precolo-
nial, colonial, and postcolonial state. They have also
engaged in artisanal mining of gemstones in
13
negotiating with the push and pull of state and capital
(Roy Chowdhury and Lahiri-Dutt 2016).
11. As a license is required to mine the land, operations by
farmers and the National Mineral Development Cor-
poration are legitimate, whereas Ramu carries out his
digging without a license, making himself vulnerable
to law enforcement agencies.
12. “Kimberlite,” coined by Henry C. Lewis in 1887, is the
primary source rock of diamonds in South Africa.
13. The weight of a carat was always 1 to 2 percent of
200 mg.
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KUNTALA LAHIRI-DUTT is a Professor in the Crawford
School of Public Policy at the ANU College of Asia and the
Pacific at the Australian National University, Canberra ACT
2601, Australia. E-mail: Kuntala.Lahiri-Dutt@anu.edu.au.
Her research interests include gender, resources, and the
environment.
ARNAB ROY CHOWDHURY is a Postdoctoral Fellow in
the Department of Public Policy at the National Research
University Higher School of Economics (NRU-HSE), Mos-
cow 101000, Russian Federation. E-mail: achowdhury@hse.ru.
His research interests include environmental movements,
resource politics, and subaltern studies.