A NEW THEORY ON ROMANI HISTORY
Romano Vod’i, Czech Republic
Jan 10 2006
A new theory on Romani history based on ongoing research into
recorded and factual evidence is being prepared by Ronald Lee and
other scholars, including Ian Hancock, Marcel Cortiade and Adrian
Marsh. Using language studies, blood groupings, DNA tests and the
factual evidence in the writings of the period by Firdausi and other
scholars at the Ghaznavid court of Mahmud and later, the Persians,
Armenians, Turks and Greeks, the theory suggests that a group
of Indians numbering in the thousands were taken out of India by
Mahmud Ghazni in the early 11th century and incorporated as ethnic
units, along with their camp followers, wives and families, to form
contingents of Indian troops to serve in the Ghaznavid Emirate in
Khurasan as ghazis and in the bodyguard of Mahmud and his successors.
The existence of such troops is well documented in contemporary
histories of the Ghaznavids, as is their participation in the battles
in Khurasan. The theory goes on to explain that in 1040, the Ghaznavid
empire was overthrown by the Seljuks and that the Indian contingency,
numbering around some 60,000, were either forced to fight for the
Seljuks and spearhead their advance in their raids into Armenia,
or fled to Armenia to escape them. In any event, the Indians ended
up in Armenia and later, in the Seljuk Sultanate of Rûm. These
proto-Romanies remained in Anatolia for two to three hundred years
and during that time they abandoned their military way of life and
took up a nomadic lifestyle based on artisan work, trading, animal
dealing and entertainment.
Gradually, small groups wandered westwards across the Bosporus to
Constantinople and from there up into the Balkans to reach Central
Europe by 1400, leaving local groups in all the regions they had passed
through. Roma made their home in almost all countries of Europe where
it has been, and still is, the failure of all of the governments of
those countries to provide protection for Roma against persecution
and massive discrimination by the police, local authorities and the
local population that are the causes of the present conditions. Under
the Geneva Convention on Refugees, this is tantamount to official
persecution and allows Roma to seek refugee status in signatory
countries.
Little action is taken to prevent massive job discrimination in the
workplace, housing and public sectors. In Romania and elsewhere,
employment ads in the local papers are allowed to state: No Roma
wanted or words to this effect. Roma are in effect living in a state of
Apartheid in the New Democracies. In the Czech Republic signs appear
in windows of discotheques, cinemas and restaurants stating: No dogs
or Gypsies allowed! Now that Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and
Poland are EU members and the other new democracies that have large
Romani populations are in line for EU membership in the near future,
it remains to be seen whether conditions will improve for the Roma,
or will proposed improvements be endlessly delayed or even abandoned.
If the evidence of the treatment of Roma in some of the
long-established EU countries is any example, such as the deplorable
refugee camps in Italy, the campsite problems in Britain, prejudice
and actual persecution in Germany, Austria, France, Britain, Italy
and elsewhere, the future of Sinti and Roma in Europe is not all
that promising. The problem is not so much one of ethnic or national
rights of Roma as minorities, where the present focus now lies, but
of fundamental human rights as guaranteed under the United Nations
Charter of Human Rights.
servis/z_en_2007_0002
–Boundary_(ID_tVo6vz/wBiMV zURSEECsTw)–