History of the Romani people

The Romani people, also referred to as Roma, Sinti or Kale, depending on the sub-group, are an Indo-Aryan ethnic group which primarily lives in Europe. The Romani may have migrated from what is the modern Indian state of Rajasthan, migrating to the northwest (the Punjab region of the Indian subcontinent) around 250 BCE. Their subsequent westward migration, possibly in waves, is now believed to have occurred beginning in about 500 CE. It has also been suggested that emigration from India may have taken place in the context of the raids by Mahmud of Ghazni. As these soldiers were defeated, they were moved west with their families into the Byzantine Empire. The author Ralph Lilley Turner theorised a central Indian origin of Romani followed by a migration to Northwest India as the Romani language shares a number of ancient isoglosses with Central Indo-Aryan languages in relation to realization of some sounds of Old Indo-Aryan. This is lent further credence by its sharing exactly the same pattern of northwestern languages such as Kashmiri and Shina through the adoption of oblique enclitic pronouns as person markers. The overall morphology suggests that Romani participated in some of the significant developments leading toward the emergence of New Indo-Aryan languages, thus indicating that the proto-Romani did not leave the Indian subcontinent until late in the second half of the first millennium. There are many different theories about the origins of the Romani people, for example, that the Roma and Sinti people came from Sindh. The Romani have been described by Diana Muir Appelbaum as unique among peoples because they have never identified themselves with a territory; they have no tradition of an ancient and distant homeland from which their ancestors migrated, nor do they claim the right to national sovereignty in any of the lands where they reside. Rather, Romani identity is bound up with the ideal of freedom expressed, in part, in having no ties to a homeland.

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History of the Romani people

Kalderash

The Kalderash are a subgroup of the Romani people. They were traditionally coppersmiths and metal workers and speak a number of Romani dialects grouped together under the term Kalderash Romani, a sub-group of Vlax Romani. The Kalderash of the Balkans and Central Europe, in addition to the Gitanos and Manouche/Sinti, are seen as one of the three main confederations (natsiya) of Romani people in Europe by certain ethnographers. The Kalderash are recognized as the most numerous confederation of the three.

Anti-Romani sentiment

Anti-Romani sentiment (also called antigypsyism, anti-Romanyism, Romaphobia, or Antiziganism) is a form of bigotry which consists of hostility, prejudice, discrimination, racism and xenophobia which is specifically directed at Romani people (Roma, Sinti, Iberian Kale, Welsh Kale, Finnish Kale, Horahane Roma, and Romanichal). Non-Romani itinerant groups in Europe such as the Yenish, Irish and Highland Travellers are frequently given the name "gypsy" and as a result, they are frequently confused with the Romani people.

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