The Roma previously known as the ‘gypsies’ and now as the Roma, have been persecuted throughout history. They have been subjected to utmost cruelty and oppression especially during the time of internal strife within almost all countries of their adaption. The Nazis under Hitler killed millions of them. Romas have been known for their skills in metalworking, music, dancing, trading in horses and storytelling. Many countries have made an attempt to settle these people in fixed employment. Up till the 20^th century, such attempts had largely met with failure. The situation in the 21^st century is different. Many Romas, at least in the United Kingdom are now fairly well settled but the stigma and marginalisation remain although the Roma have contributed to many celebrities in the hall of fame. The situation in the rest of Europe is not so very different. Romas remain the most marginalised of all minorities within Europe. In Hungary, in what appears to be a historical closing of the circle, one Roma group now take their inspiration from Dr B R Ambedkar.

It has been well known among scholars that the Roma originated from India. However, the date of their exodus had in the past been largely contested. It was once thought that they left India in a single wave around the time of the first millennium. One factor for this migration could have been the great famines which took place in 1022, 1033, 1052 in which entire provinces in India were supposed to have been depopulated. But famines were fairly common in India as these were elsewhere so the complete explanation has to be sought somewhere else.

It is only recently that using the DNA profiling technique, that it has been determined that these people first originated in India circa 1500 years ago. Prior to DNA testing, the strongest evidence for their origins in India was found in linguistics. It would be impossible to explain the grammar and vocabulary of the Roma language without recourse to the development of vernacular Indian languages. 50% of the words found in the true Romani language have their origins in India. Other factors points to their Indian origins. Their pollution taboos, including ideas about ritual purity and women’s taboos, are the same as those found amongst almost all castes and tribes in India. Almost varying from group to group the social customs of the Romas together with their ritual manners superstitions, laws and religious beliefs are fundamentally the same. It is not known whether the Roma were originally nomadic people or settled or semi-nomadic, but their Indian origins could never be disputed.

Roma have also been identified with amongst others, the Doms and Jotts or Jats of north-west India. However, the Jat tribe is not mentioned in India circa 1500 years ago but it does not preclude their earlier existence.  Jats, are mentioned in Sindh and in Punjab, at the time of the Arab Muslim invasion (711-715) in India. The Jats were originally nomadic cattle keepers and were classified on par with Sudras. Even the early Muslim rulers asked that the Jats be accompanied by a dog when they came to pay their taxes as an indicator of their lowly status. Significantly, the professions practiced by the ‘gypsies’ are almost identical to the one that the Law Giver Manu of the Hindus prescribed to the low-castes and to the wandering proto Jats. Some of these occupations, which were forbidden to the higher castes were singing, playing musical instruments, dancing, training, camels, elephants, horses, driving wagons, moving from place to place as well as fortune-telling and gambling. Metalworking was another such profession and one is reminded of nomadic Indian Dom group of tribes such as the Ghasis, Loris and the Asuras. Unsurprisingly, due to their love of freedom, all Roma dislike priests. Nevertheless, the wise and the learned men called Rasheys, reminiscent of the Indian rishis are honoured and esteemed in Romani society. The sceptre of the Gypsy tribal chief is the trident or trishul of the Indian god Shiva traditionally an antimonial deity. Romani tribal chief gathering is very similar to the Indian village Panchayat.

One scholar of Roma sociology has identified the following tribes/castes from Indian who, in his opinion, could possibly pass of as one the ancestors of the present-day ‘gypsies’;

Lohars                    Itnerant blacksmith singers.

Doms                      Singers and dancers Doms.

Bawari                    A nomadic predatory tribe of who used coded signs.

Meos                      Cattle rustlers.

Gandhila                One of the lowest tribes/castes of India and well known as itinerant sharpeners of scissors and knives.

Beria                       A sub-caste of the Dom, this is the tribe whose women read palms and tell fortunes.

Biloch                     Camp followers of the Lohar who transported their supplies

Kiakn                      Horse breeders.

Gopal                      Nomadic tenet dwellers and wrestlers.

Bansberia              Famous as pole vaulters over animals in village fairs.

Sansi                       A so-called criminal (read rebellious) tribe.

It is now known that genetically speaking the Indian population began mixing about 4200 years ago. This would be roughly the time of Indus people moving eastwards.  Later on there was intermarriage between the Aryan and the non-Aryan elites, which stopped when the Indo-Aryan expansion into the Gangetic valley stopped a few centuries before the Common Era. Tribes were converted to castes. Previous fighting tribes were either absorbed in the Aryan society as Kshatriyas and if non-militarised tribes were reduced to the ranks of helot Sudras. A policy of bringing under control and failing that, that of deportation of resisting tribes may have been followed by Indian Kings, who followed the law of Manu which had a precedence in Ashoka the Great, who carried out this policy in following the mass scorched earth destruction and deportation as well as selling into slavery in Kalinga War which took place 262 to 261 BCE.

A new genetic analysis suggests that intermingling stopped and the caste system may have become firmly entrenched around 2000 years ago, i.e. at the beginning of the Common Era.

The time of Common Era around 100CE, plus or minus 200 years is the time when the scholars believed that Manu Simrti, the religious law code of the Hindus evolved, not in the Madhya Desha or central areas but on the outlaying semi-civilized areas where small kings were emerging from the Kaliyuga anarchy. This text was created by multiple authors but given the sanction of an ancient sage called Manu. All Hindu lawgivers who came after Manu quoted him approvingly as the reference law giver, fountainhead and consolidator of all the religion-legal framework of varna system which no less than the great God Krishna himself had created.

Manu’s ideal kingdom was a very small one, a self-sufficient, agriculture based economy, with travelling and trade not completely banned, but very much restricted. This had a negative impact on Buddhist merchants, traders and artisans and other groups of people whose professions involved travel as well as nomadic and semi-settled tribes who always represented a danger to the authority of both the Brahmin and more importantly to the Brahmin-king alliance. Many of the patrons of Buddhist monasteries were technical Sudra artisans and members of the craft guilds. The law also affected such groups as the Jains who were also Vaisaya traders. Manu’s ideal kingdom did not consist mostly of Sudras.

Some people have doubted that the measures described in the Manu Smirti were ever carried out. Those who doubt this, have the onus on them to explain why terrible punishments prescribed in Manu Smirti and in other Hindu holy books were recorded in the first place if there was no intention for these punishments to be carried out. People were to be oppressed in all aspects of their life for the simple reason that they were born into low exploited castes. It would appear that in the future, the very existence of these horrific punishments would be enough to keep the rebels under check. These punishments could be carried out anytime so desired as these were retained on the statuette books. It is ironic, that these unsettled freedom-loving semi-nomads went to other countries, and when there was a crisis in that country they were subject to various pogroms. They did intermingle with others but they kept their castle-like structures, customs etc. as this was the cornerstone of their free way of living without the hated settled caste system.

Gupta period is described as a golden era in Indian history. However when the Gupta empire ended the fragmentation resulted in smaller, much weaker kingdoms. In the late Gupta period, when the kings rule extended only to a few hundred miles around the capital around the Ganga Jamuna Doab, local judges are known as Dandanayaks and Mahadandanayaks; danda meaning staff; meted out punishments at an intermediate level between the king and the local Brahmins.  This post Gupta period described in the holy texts as the age of darkness or the age of Kali or Kaliyuga following the Hun invasion of 455-467 CE dealing a highly destructive blow to Buddhism. The Huns destroyed Buddhist monasteries and killed Buddhist monks or bhikhus. Previous to this, the Gupta rulers had kept a religious balance between Brahmins and the Buddhists in their kingdoms, but now the Brahmins found their opportunity and at least some Saiva Brahmins accepted grants of lands from the Huns. During the five centuries, succeeding the third century, most of the Indian monks who moved to China did so during this period. The destruction of Buddhist monasteries must have had a negative impact on trade as well as people whose job it was to manufacture commodities, transport these and supply ancillary services on which this trade depended. It is possible that some of these people who previously in the supply chains these on a very small scale found the demand decline and may have followed the best route for international trade namely the Silk Road westwards. But the main reason may have been the refusal of the nomadic and semi-nomadic freedom-loving people to settle down under Hindu Law-Giver Manu’s ordinance of a rigid caste society with the oppressive legalistic framework for the castes/classes engaged in the primary mode of production and its ancillary service industries. Mass desertion was one of the resistance techniques that has been practised by the Indian peasantry for a long time. The settled ati-Sudras had already accepted the status quo and were unlikely to rebel. The diktat was applied more to those groups on the periphery of the settled communities which could be converted to Sudras and tied to the land under the land granted to Brahmins. Throughout history, it was very difficult to bring this group under some kind of control and settled them for agriculture. In medieval times the Muslims were to have a great deal of trouble with the Jats in Punjab and Sind. When military action failed to subdue them completely, later Muslims followed the earlier practice of Sanskritisation like that of Brahmin missionaries. Only this time it would be the high caste ruling class Sufis who would supplement military action, for some members of the Jat tribe’s conversion to Islam. The origins of both in the Hindu, Muslim and  Sikh Jats,  lie in the same tribal grouping defragmenting into settled peasantry under the influence of religion promising social equality.

This would put the Roma exodus around 400-500 CE but in the middle of the era, succeeding Manu (200BCE to 200 CE) and in the later era of latter-day Hindu lawgivers such Narada (300CE) and Yajanvalkaya (?-500CE). A group of Brahmin priests on the peripheral area may have espoused their hostile anti-people philosophy earlier on, but they were not taken seriously as earlier on there was no need for such extreme measures. But with the Hun invasion leading to defragmentation of society and passing of time when Kaliyuga anarchy began to spread widely, these ideas must have been found attractive by the ruling classes and local kings who were after all upholders of Dharma. Even before the anarchy, the Dom groups must loved their freedom, refusing to settle down. Rather than give it up they decided to leave India looking for a free country because the new smaller rising kings were enforcing Manu’s ordinances. They must have also thought that the terminal points of the Silk Road must be rich and free countries, as it was well known (as in the Question of King Milinda) that Yavanas or the Greeks and Romans did not have any tribes/castes but only masters and slaves.

This was also the time of the beginning of the Indian version of feudalism created by the land grant system at a larger scale although it had started around the common era but around 400-600 it was peaking. Manu’s followers, however, did make a concession to the so-called non-Untouchable low-castes who were left behind. He placed them higher than the Chandals and the Untouchables, making them feel that they had a larger stake in the system than those below them. Kulluka, another Hindu law-giver, for example, considered it bad to tax the non-untouchable Sudra even in bad times. Manu’s and his successors ingenious lay in prescribing differential, rewards and punishments for different layers of his idealised hierarchical Indian caste system.

Interestingly enough the people at the very bottom of this hierarchical society were not subject to this exodus as they had already accepted the status quo. It were only those tribal and semi-tribals, previously mostly wandering groupings, including the Doms, Asurs and Jats etc. may have been subject to this diktat.

Author – Amarjit Singh aka Dalit Shukra