The Romani Hindu Faith/Dharma, Culture & History

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 As I mentioned in earlier article  History of the Ḍom People (ancestors of the Roma) within the South Asia (and partly beyond)   our ethnic name, the Roma, comes from the  Ḍom and the Ḍom(a) are connected to the drumming nomadic community , etymology of that caste name comes from the Dravidian origins - the ṭamaṭama (where ṭ reads close to Indo-Aryan Ḍ, it means retroflexed R) and ṭamaṭama is a type of drum "tomtom" . Why ethnic name Roma comes from Ḍom(a) & who are the Ḍom(a) ? The  Ḍom(a) are the nomadic group , the Ḍom(a) is same as the case of the Roma in Europe a umbrella ethnic term, which in fact contains various Jatis (castes) ranging from ritually clean Śudra (almost Vaish-like Varna), via the ritually unclean Śudra to straight-up Dalits (ritually unclean untouchables). The Ḍom(a) are often misunderstood by the Gora (Whites) and by the Indians (or by other South Asians as a whole), where they (non- Ḍoma) claim that all the Ḍom ...

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...