 |
| Django Reinhardt, a prominent musician of Romani heritage |
Chances are, you’ve heard of “Gypsies.” Chances are, you don’t know that term "Gypsy" is an insulting one for the “Roma” or “Romani” people and their global diaspora. And chances are, you don’t know they are originally from India.
National Geographic aired a season of a reality TV show on their channel called American Gypsies. For those of you who aren’t familiar with it, it’s a portrait of a gangly, psychic-shop-empire-owning, kerfuffling “Gypsy” community in New York resembling Al Pacino and his spawn. This show is problematic for two reasons: the term “gypsy” is in fact a pejorative one (as the show states in an easily overlooked disclaimeron the National Geographic website: “NOTE: although commonly used, the term "Gypsy" is often considered offensive and inaccurate” and second: The word “Gypsy” is derived from from the word “Egyptian"--which is again false, because the Roma originated in Northern India, not Egypt.
The Romani people were displaced by Mahmud-al-Ghazni of the Ghaznavid Empire, taken as prisoners of war, and brought back with the Ottomans to fight the Byzantine Empire. These people later moved to parts of Eastern and Southern Europe, and even into North and South America, popularizing outwardly expressions of their culture through song, dance, music, art, and of course—fortune telling. Yet, the social and political conditions for the Roma have remained bleak throughout history.
Roma have faced centuries of defamation, systemic oppression, and social marginalization all over the world—so much, in fact, that even to be called a “gypsy” is considered to be a slighting one that has become synonymous with thievery and swindling. Not many people know that in WWII, along with Jews, Catholics, and other minorities, the Roma people were the most targeted group, with close to 1,000,000 Roma being exterminated during the Third Reich. Meanwhile, it was revealed recently that Swedish police have illegally kept a registry of specifically Romani names—over a thousand of them minors, 52 of them two-year-old children. This registry is based on biology, not criminal activity. Time Magazine reports that in 2009, France deported 10,000 Roma people back to Romania and Bulgaria. The next year, at least another 8,300 Roma were deported. These are small examples of the breadth and depth of the systematic targeting and exclusion gypsies have constantly faced.
"I feel a kinship with the Roma People. I have always admired their love of adventure, their closeness to nature and above all, their fortitude and resilience" former Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi said, during her opening speech at the second International Romani Festival in Chandigarh, India on October 29, 1983 “There are 15 million Roma spread the world over. Their history is one of sorrow and suffering. But it is also the story of the triumph of the human spirit over adversity. The persecution which the Roma have faced so gallantly for nearly a thousand years, marked in our own days by Hitler's genocidal frenzy, makes them an example of courage and endurance. These qualities are associated with India, which they regard as their original home.”
The Indian government has long been a supporter of Romani culture, human rights and advocacy. The Roma people are eligible to claim a PIO card (Person of Indian Origin) and can obtain Indian citizenship quite easily, as many Indian diasporas will find world-over, from Trinidad to Uganda. More and more Romani people have begun to show an interest in rediscovering their Indian roots, and hundreds of Romani people find themselves making pilgrimages to these celebratory events in what many of them consider their ethnic homeland. Interestingly, the official Romani flag, created in 1933 and approved by World Romani Congress in 1971, resembles the Indian flag with a spoked wheel in the middle.
Because of the history of ridicule, the “gypsy” stereotype extends to people of non-Roma ethnicities from countries in former Soviet Bloc. People from Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary and Slovakia might face discrimination because of a popular Western European prejudice against Eastern Europeans, and the lack of knowledge about the difference between the Roma people and, say Romanians. Britain recently noted a 26% increase in the number of (non-Roma) Romanian and Bulgarian employees and plans to post temporary immigration restrictions on people hailing from these countries.
"Western Europeans think we're all gypsies," Livui, a non-Roma Hungarian student remarks while discussing the plight of the Roma. "They think anyone from Central Europe or Eastern Europe is a gypsy. That's not true. In my country, the gypsy people are treated like outcasts, like they're lesser. It is an endless cycle of crime and exclusion. We do nothing to include them and they do not want to be included. Maybe it's karma, that when people from the Balkans go to the West, they are then treated like gypsies."
"Western Europeans think we're all gypsies," Livui, a non-Roma Hungarian student remarks while discussing the plight of the Roma. "They think anyone from Central Europe or Eastern Europe is a gypsy. That's not true. In my country, the gypsy people are treated like outcasts, like they're lesser. It is an endless cycle of crime and exclusion. We do nothing to include them and they do not want to be included. Maybe it's karma, that when people from the Balkans go to the West, they are then treated like gypsies."
Dr. Ian Hancock was born to a Roma family in Britain. He didn’t finish high school, but took advantage of an affirmative action program put in place by Harold Wilson and went on to gain three PhDs—thereby becoming the first Romani person in Britain to earn a doctorate. His academic work first dealt with creole languages, and cultural and linguistic studies of West Africa. But a few years after he began teaching at the University of Texas at Austin in 1972, Hancock decided to start teaching and writing extensively on the history, culture, and language of the Romani. He was also one of the leading voices against cultural appropriation and discrimination in the case of National Geographic’s American Gypsies, which confirms stereotypes of psychic shops and fortune-telling amongst the Romani people.
But why oracles and fortunes? “Fortune telling is a common and respected profession in Asia,” Hancock says. “Westerners are outwardly skeptical of it, but read their horoscopes every day in the newspapers nevertheless, and kings and presidents all have their fortune tellers. It is a profession simply continued from India. We call it drabaripen (drab = medicine, drabar- means “to heal”) and it’s seen as healing the soul. We call it reading and advising rather than fortune telling. It survives because of people’s belief in it, because it is easily transported if you’re forced to move immediately by the authorities, and it can be exploited as a protective measure; if you believe I have psychic powers, you might cause me bad luck if I hurt you.”
Hancock often notes that people familiar with Indian culture might find Romani culture to be strikingly similar, despite the millennia of removal from the subcontinent. “If you look deep into Roma cosmology, you will still find deities and figures uncannily similar to Durga, you will still find Kali, and so on. The Roma language, if heard from afar, sounds in pronunciation like something resembling Hindi.”
But are The Roma really a lost Indian diaspora? Or are they now a group of "true Europeans?"
But are The Roma really a lost Indian diaspora? Or are they now a group of "true Europeans?"
“There is a chapter in my book We are the Romani Peoplecalled “How Indian Are Romanies?” Dr. Hancock says--- "it is followed by a chapter called “How European are Romanies?” Long story short: the truth is--we are both. We are equally both.”
Prof. Hancock answers a few basic questions on the Romani people and their plight.
How did we come to use the ethnic slur “gypped”?
I’m wondering whether it was actually coined by some journalist in the media, given its appearance in newspaper articles, a play on words? People don’t as a rule think it’s a “bad” word or insulting or racist because it is so widely assumed in this country that “gypsy” (usually written as a common noun) is a behaviour and not an ethnicity. So you’re not insulting any real people. And the media certainly foster the idea that it’s a behaviour, applying it to many groups that have nothing to do with Romanies. Gypsy cops. Scholar gypsies. Big fat gypsies. The names of musical groups.
What was life like as a Roma youth in Britain?
Very family-centred, keeping ourselves to ourselves, not many of the neighbours knew what we were. I knew the way things were run in our house were different from in school friends’ houses, I was taught not to eat there. We left London when I was in my early teens and went to Canada, but after four years I went back to the UK.
You are now head of a Romani Studies program at UT-Austin—how did this come about?
Not yet [a Chair] because my university doesn’t recognize the Romani Archives and Documentation Center (www.radoc.net), which is the largest in the world. It began after I got involved and wanted to know more about who we were, and I began to buy any books I could find. One of my first jobs when I went back to London was in an antiquarian bookshop, so I was off to a good start. Since then, I have been able to keep it growing with donations and so on. It is visited every year by visitors from Europe (arranged by our State Department), by academics on sabbatical who spend months here using it, and by my students. Right now I have a grad student, Vijay, writing his thesis on Romani origins in India.
Who are prominent Roma people today or in history?
Probably the best known are Django Reinhardt, Charlie Chaplin, Rita Hayworth, Joe Zawinul, Bob Hoskins . . . one of our leaders, Nicolae Gheorghe, had a full-page obit in The Economist last month. We have a number of organizations that monitor racism. Check out www.erio.org and www.errc.org
Do the Roma consider themselves as part of the lost Indian diaspora?
An increasing number do, since this connection was lost to our memory and is now being relearnt. The Indian retentions in our language and culture are considerable, and what has held us together for a thousand years is the barrier between Roma and non-Roma based on the notion of spiritual defilement through contact (Brahmin – Kshattriya - Vaisya – Shudra).
Here are some words with similarities to Sanskrit-based languages:
ekh, dui, trin, shtar, panch 12345,
bal=hair
kan=ear
chib=tongue
dand=tooth
shero=head
pi=drink
ja = go
baro=big
Shows like American Gypsies or My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding: comments?
We try hard to stop these harmful shows, but don’t have the money to pay smart lawyers. I did manage to put a stop to American Gypsy (and got death threats via my department at the university) but it didn’t stop its being shown overseas. It’s in Italy right now, where anti-Gypsyism is increasing. It just adds fire to the fuel.
