The Romani Hindu Faith/Dharma, Culture & History

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...

Introduction The Roma people have a complex social hierarchy that traces its roots to the Indian subcontinent. This system is characterized by a nuanced division of tribes, clans, and castes, which mirrors the Indian Varna, Jāti and Gotra systems. These castes are divided into ritually clean ones and ritually unclean ones. Note: We don't have a word "caste", same as Indians don't have this word. Some Romani tribes alone are of one caste, some tribes have various castes and in some tribes are only clans. Concepts of Varna, Jati, and Gotra (I will explain the categories more in this article) Varna : The fourfold classification in the ancient Indian texts (Brahmin, Kshatriya, Vaishya, and Shudra) that is idealized and represents broad occupational categories. However, Varna often does not align neatly with the realities of regional and caste-specific social systems. Jati : Refers to caste or sub-caste. Jatis are endogamous groups that typically have specific occupations,...

The  original Ḍom People started migrating from southern India (apparently somewhere in between nowadays Tamil Nadu and Kerala, with stops taking longer time than 300 years in nowadays Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Karnataka) to northern India in 2500 BC. Some etymology to the name Ḍom. It´s presumed root, ḍom, which is connected with drumming, is linked to word damara and damaru, Sanskrit terms for "drum" and the Sanskrit verbal root डम् ḍam- 'to sound (as a drum)', perhaps a loan from Dravidian, e.g. Kannada ḍamāra 'a pair of kettle-drums', and Telugu ṭamaṭama 'a drum, tomtom'. So, Ḍom literally means the "drummers" = musicians. Why Ḍom are ancestor of the Roma? From Ḍom arose our ethnic name Rom - the Roma, in some dialects still with retroflexed R. In elsewhere pronounced as Dom/Domari with normal "D" in the name (within the Middle East & in Pakistan) and Lom (in Caucasus). Closest people to the original Ḍom are nowadays Adi...