The Romani Hindu Faith/Dharma, Culture & History

This story is mine.  I woke around 7 a.m. up to prepare for school but I later decided to skip it that day. Instead, I tuned my TV to ČT2, the Czech public broadcaster, which regularly rebroadcasted news from STV1, its Slovak counterpart. As a native Slovak speaker (beside Czech and Romani), I relished these opportunities to hear the news in my language. We had not a satellite TV back then The bulletin proceeded normally until its conclusion. Suddenly, the moderators; a woman, a man, and a sports presenter, veered into unscripted territory. They adopted a hard anti-American stance, declaring something along the lines of: "This is a message for all viewers: the elites are not telling you the truth, not about the war that the Americans started, but also about finance—after all, America just prints dollars." They extended their diatribe to criticisms of War on Iraq, transforming the segment into an impromptu debate. A caller even joined, prolonging the broadcast beyond its sched...

This story is mine. Back then I was l iving on the first floor of our family house, I slept with windows and balcony doors open to combat the heat. Around dawn, I was awakened by unmistakable sounds of someone -or something- rummaging through scrap metal piled beneath my window. Peering down, I beheld a tall, thin figure shrouded in what appeared to be white cloth. Despite staring for a minute or two, I couldn't fully focus on it. So, I decided to move stealthily to the balcony for a better view. I observed it for at least five minutes more. It resembled a massive, slender dog standing on hind legs, using forepaws that looked somewhat like hands with finger-like appendages to sift through the metal. Yet, it also bore humanoid traits, methodically searching as if for a specific item. When it noticed me, it locked eyes with me for five to seven seconds, appearing startled or frightened. It then fled; first on two legs, then dropping to all fours. I dashed downstairs to the yard, spot...

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...

The Bashalde controversy & who is Ian Hancock   In among the Romani diaspora within the United States of America of the "Hungarian-Slovak Gypsies" (the Servika & Ungrika Roma tribes) started the controversy, when Ian Hancock and Bill Duna innovatively created term for the musician "caste" the Bašaldé (Bashalde) to become a name of the whole tribe in the USA, as most Servika & Ungrika Roma who came there belonged to the musicians or were at least the blacksmiths with musician tradition (I will explain it later on). This controversy was brought to the light by Stephen Piskor, a widely known person of the Hungarian-Slovak Roma community from Cleveland, OH. He is a real Rom, related to me via family ties of the wider family of mine (Fajta) who came to the USA as immigrants from Eastern Slovakia, so I am not underestimating his point of view, I am just explaining to you my viewpoint. There are the Roma who disagree with this term "Bashalde", as they...

Today, August 2, is the Roma (& Sinti) Holocaust Memorial Day. The Romani Holocaust (often referred to as the Porrajmos - a term that, while widely used, is linguistically controversial, as in some dialects it translates to "rape", alternative and more right terms include Samudaripen - Genocide, Kali Traš - Black Fear, and Sarvanaš—a word which closest translation may suggest a total or complete disappearance)   did hit the up to 2.5 million Roma, Sinti-Manouché and Kale as the direct victims who were killed by the Nazi Germany & its collaborators. The date of 2 August was chosen for the memorial because on the night of 2–3 August 1944, 2,897 Roma, mostly women, children and elderly people, were killed in the "Gypsy families camp" ("Zigeunerfamilienlager") at Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. Exact number of the killed Roma & Sinti is not known because there was not full statistics, and also at the concentration camps they counted usually...

This date, May 16, marks a pivotal moment in history, when the Romani prisoners incarcerated in the so-called “Zigeunerlager” (Gypsy Camp), also known as the “Zigeunerfamilienlager” (Camp of the Gypsy Families) at Auschwitz-Birkenau, initiated a courageous act of resistance. The uprising began upon learning of the German Nazi regime’s intention to liquidate the camp by exterminating the remaining 6,000 Romani detainees in the gas chambers. On the night of May 16th, 1944, the Roma rose in defiance against the SS guards, armed only with tools of labour—hammers, pickaxes, and shovels. Through their bravery and resistance, no Roma were murdered in the gas chambers on that day. This revolt stands as the sole documented instance of an uprising at Auschwitz, and it is rightly honoured as Romani Resistance Day. It is essential to view this event within the broader context of the Romani Holocaust—often referred to as the Porrajmos (a term that, while widely used, is linguistically controversial...

 🛤️ From the Ashes of Faith to the Roots of Dharma A Personal Journey Through Religion, Identity, and Return 📜 Prologue I was born in post-communist Czechoslovakia during the early 1990s, into a family of mixed Romani and Slavic heritage. Though our household was essentially secular, religion lingered quietly in the corners, like an old guest who never truly leaves. S ome of my close family members were Christian— both Catholic and Orthodox. One of my grandfathers had even been baptized in the Czechoslovak Hussite Church and had served as a ministrant ( child altar server). However, part of his family later turned strongly anti- Christian and anti- religious— likely influenced by firsthand or familial experiences with clerical abuse, a sadly common reality in the Christian  religion. Though I could recite the Our Father and the Hail Mary—fragments even in Latin—my disposition remained one of sceptical rationalism, more Marx than Matthew. As I have a heritage of the Rom...