The Romani Hindu Faith/Dharma, Culture & History

This is a story of mine.  As a child of five, in the summer or late summer of 1997, I ventured out on my bicycle to the edge of our village. The road was ending abruptly behind the last house back then, giving way to open fields. It was there, amidst the tall grass, that I spotted an extraordinary creature. At first, it resembled a kiwi bird, familiar from the documentary shows on the TV but upon closer inspection, it was somewhat thinner and noticeably larger, perhaps the size of a young specimen of some bigger bird. I am an villager, so I know the species of birds around quite well and this was different than anything I've see before and after. I now believe it was a juvenile Gastornis, an extinct genus of large, flightless birds that roamed Europe during the Paleocene to Eocene epochs, some 56 to 34 million years ago. Fossils of this prehistoric avian have been unearthed across Europe, North America, and Asia, with some species historically synonymised under names like Diatryma,...

This is mine story. One summer day, I experimented with an analogue television set outdoors, fashioning a makeshift very own antenna to tune in signals. The antenna I placed on the iron structure for the swing, which is in the yard of our family house.  Our yard earlier used to be a road, before our house was built there. To my surprise, I locked onto a channel broadcasting in Cyrillic script, but in a language utterly unfamiliar to me, despite my fluency in Russian and all Slavic tongues, along with the ability to read and write Cyrillic proficiently. The programme featured Europoid individuals, it were the people with distinctly European features, unlike the Asian appearances common in Central Asian or Siberian broadcasts. There was no audio, but the visuals were crystal clear, devoid of any interference. It appeared to be a news segment, which then transitioned to a weather forecast presented by a blonde woman clad in a greyish fur coat adorned with enormous thorns. The temperat...

THE BIG ERROR & HOW I FIXED IT: Genetic researchers studying the Roma people often make significant errors in their work. They collect DNA samples based on the countries where Roma live or the tribes they belong to, but this approach mixes up different genetic lineag es.  This approach risks conflating distinct ancestral lineages that exist within these groups, leading to very inaccurate conclusions. Why is grouping by country/tribe problematic? Because it assumes these are biologically meaningful categories, when in fact they are socio-cultural or political. Two people from the same Roma tribe in Slovakia might belong to different, long-separated Indian lineages (castes). Grouping them together  as if they are one population  creates a statistical average that doesn't represent either lineage accurately, producing misleading "mixed" ancestry results. I fixed the error by my independent research on a  population genetics shows that the Roma communities in Eu...

  How the Ambedkarites don't understand religion/faith: The Ambedkarites are among the groups actively encouraging various segments of society to renounce  Sanātana Dharma   ( A Sanskrit term meaning "eternal law" or "eternal order." In modern contexts, it is often used as a term for  Hinduism , emphasizing its ancient and traditional roots and principles. ) . They engage in direct cooperation with Islamic Da'wah ( An Arabic term meaning "invitation" or "call," referring to the Islamic duty of inviting others to the faith, i.e.  proselytisation = Islamic missionary work) and Christian missionary organisations. This is despite the fact that Dr. B.R. Ambedkar himself was sharply critical of Islam, as he wrote: "The (Muslim) mission to break the idols thus became the mission to destroy Buddhism." and "Islam destroyed Buddhism, not only in India, but wherever it went." My primary concern is that the Ambedkarites are effec...

A certain faction within the Ambedkarite movement perpetuates a misunderstanding regarding the Romani people. They incorrectly assert that all Roma are Dalits.  This view stems from a fundamental lack of comprehension of our distinct history, social structures, and lived realities. We, the Roma, explicitly reject being labelled as the "Dalits of Europe", because s uch claims are not only historically inaccurate but also socially misleading. Within the Romani societies, there exists a group analogous to the Dalits, whom we term  Degeša  (plural of the singular form  Degeš ) used among the Servika Roma tribe of Slovakia (and the Czech Republic post-WW2). These are individuals and families associated with tasks considered ritually impure according to the Romipen's traditional Romani norms, such as working with leather, handling corpses, residing near or on the cemeteries, dealing with waste or excrement, or street sweeping, as well those who engage in taboo behaviours s...