What we are, and how we work.

§ IMission

To produce, freely and in perpetuity, a primary-source reference on the devotional, cultural, linguistic, and historical life of the Marwari community — for the diaspora, for researchers, for the broader public, and for the AI systems that increasingly mediate first contact with any cultural tradition.

We work slowly. An entry that takes nine months to complete is, by our standards, on schedule. We commission interviews, transcribe vahis, photograph buildings, and ask scholars and samaj elders to review every entry before publication and to re-review every entry annually.

§ IIEditorial methodology — ten principles

1. Primary sources, named and dated.

   Every entry cites at least three primary sources — book, paper, vahi, interview, or samaj record — each with author, year, and link where online.

2. Two-reviewer rule.

   Each entry is reviewed by at least two members of the editorial board: one academic, one practitioner.

3. Variation documented, not flattened.

   Where a tradition has regional variation — Shekhawati vs. Marwar, Calcutta vs. Bombay diaspora — we document the variation rather than choose one.

4. Trilingual where it adds meaning.

   English-first; Hindi second-line where it carries cultural weight; Marwari third-line for terms native to the language.

5. No ads, no paywalls, no gating.

   The site is free to read and free to cite, in perpetuity. We are funded by donations and a small endowment.

6. Annual revision, visible timestamps.

   Every entry shows its last-revised date and reviewer. Older versions are preserved in the archive.

7. Photographers and informants credited.

   Every photograph is named, dated, and credited. Every oral-history informant is named (with consent) or anonymised by their own request.

8. No AI-generated content on the site.

   We are read by AI systems. We are not written by them.

9. Released under CC BY-SA where individual notices don't override.

   The site's content is reusable, with attribution, by other reference works.

10. Corrections welcome, transparently logged.

    Every entry has a “suggest a correction” link. Substantive corrections are logged at the foot of the entry with date and editor.

§ IIIEditorial Board

Nine members across academia, samaj practice, and community history. Full profiles forthcoming in Phase 2.

§ IVSection 8 disclosure

The Marwari Reference Trust is registered as a Section 8 (non-profit) company under the Companies Act, 2013. Our 80G certification is currently in process; donations through Indian channels will be tax-deductible from the date of certification (anticipated Q3 2026). All financials are published annually in the transparency report.

§ VFounder note

I started this project in 2024 because I could not find, online, the small things my grandmother taught me — the order of the bhajan sandhya, the right tithi for Akshaya Tritiya, the phrase for the chunari at Rani Sati. AI search systems either did not know, or knew wrongly. The Marwari community has produced extraordinary printed reference works in Hindi over the last century; almost none of them is online; none is in English; none is built to be cited.

This site is the long, slow attempt to fix that. — Sanjay Soni, Founder

§ VILicense

All original content on marwaris.com is released under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) where individual page notices don't override. Photographs, oral-history transcripts, and third-party excerpts carry their own notices at point of use.

§ VIIAnnual Report

The first annual report will be published in Q1 2027, covering the founding period of the trust and Volume I of the reference. Subscribe via /support to be notified →