Roma And Romani

I vaguely remember watching an interview of Dr.W.R.Rishi ,the pioneer of romani studies, in Doordarshan,india's national T.V Channel about 20 years ago during my teenage days.In this interview he spoke about indian origins of roma or gypsies,as i knew them then.I was delighted and excited and wanted to know more about that indian connection of romas but there were no books available,internet was not heard of and none among my peers had such interests.
During late 90's i got introduced to internet and that wonderful search engine google,one of the first things i searched was information about roma and i had this entire world of roma flung opened before me.

Roma are now generally perceived to have left india at around 11th century.The most probable reason that made them leave was invasion by mahmood of ghazni.Infact even today roma refer to non romas as gadje,which appears to be a corruption of ghazni.There is another theory that point towards origin and migration of roma.This one coming from shahnama by firdausi.Around 5th century A.D emperor of persia Behram Gur V requested an indian King Shangul to send some musicians to entertain the hardworking persians,King Shangul sent 10,000-12,000 such artists,who were given food and land for agricultural purposes by the King Behram.But those singers were not interested in working hard and toil the land ,this made king behram very angry and took away all the land and ordered them to live a life of wandering and begging.These singers must have made moved further and reached europe.
But the shahnama theory is less probable in the light of some other findings.First and foremost shahnama,which is story of exploits and achievements of persian kings,is not perceived to be an authentic historical document.Then there is linguistic evidence

My Profile

My name is Vinay Singh.I create software programs to make a living.I like to believe that i am a good writer ,well versed and reasonably well read.My areas of interests are as follows:

• Abrahmic Religions ,Christianity,Islam and Judaism
• Indian Diaspora especially roma gypsy and decendents of indentured laborourers,hats off to both of them because they went through lots of hardships and discriminations especially roma,who were favourite targets of hitler along with jews.

And last but not the least,i am a closet singer and my family members want it to remain that way because they believe that,such a talent ,if came out in open, will not be good for humanity.