dr Marcel COURTHIADE
Head of the IRU Commission for Language and Linguistic Rights
Head of the department of Rromani Studies
at the INALCO (Paris University of Oriental Studies)

The Rroms in the context of European peoples without a compact territory

“When we see how calmly, clearly and straightforwardly the vast majority of Rroms, Ashkalis, Beash, Rudari and other such peoples cope from day to day, and have always coped, with their respective identities – at least in the Balkans and Eastern Europe, in other words the areas where they actually live – we can only be amazed by the confusion that has arisen since politicians and bureaucrats, who are obviously strangers to the region concerned and even more so to these groups of people, have taken it upon themselves to lay down the law and decide, in place of the people concerned, what is fair and what is not.”
Jeta Duka

Given the plethora of names, some less appropriate than others, that are used in ordinary conversation and in the media to designate the peoples who are the subject of various texts aimed at speaking about Rroms, it is hardly surprising that the ordinary reader should be somewhat lost. Certain would-be specialists actually enjoy compounding the confusion that already exists in order to intensify the “mystery” surrounding their area of research, believing that by so doing they enhance their own importance. The people concerned are liable to refer to themselves by different names – Rroms, Gitanos, Gypsies, Travellers or Manouches, for example – from one minute to the next and seemingly indiscriminately, usually in order to avoid being categorised in a negative way, and at the same time to test their interlocutors, seeking to identify the terms most likely to foster a good relationship, especially in dealings with public authorities. Inevitably, after decades of random usage, the words lose their meaning and become interchangeable, in a vicious circle that serves to intensify the confusion and its tragic consequences. This need not be so, however, if we consider what they really signify, for each corresponds to a quite specific idea or perspective.

Clearly, however, seeking to explain the various names in a sort of circular process by using some of them to define the others is not practical and nor does it actually shed much light on the subject. In order to enhance our understanding we need to move beyond the narrow confines of each denomination, rather as in the brain-teaser where the corners of a square have to be joined by no more than three straight lines and the only way to do it is by extending the lines outside the square. In fact, the concepts with which we are concerned become considerably less complicated if we begin by recognising that Europe contains not only several dozen peoples geographically linked to particular territories (which despite differing degrees of overlap are, as a rule, fairly compact), but also a dozen other peoples who have in common the fact of being scattered throughout many areas and virtually nowhere constituting the majority of the population in a territorial unit larger than a municipality, district or the equivalent.

These peoples differ from the true diasporas(2) inasmuch as they no longer have direct links with a compact territory of origin (as do the Polish or Albanian diasporas, for example, with their roots respectively in the compact territories of Poland and Albania) and in many cases their contact with their place of origin was severed by a “founding disaster”, the memory of which may or may not have been kept alive. These various peoples may have had, and some may still have, a more or less itinerant lifestyle but their main shared characteristic is their dispersal over a non-compact territory. Some of them are, moreover, almost unknown outside the regions where they live, or at least very little known by most other Europeans. They are listed in the table on the following page, which requires some comment and some explanation.
The Western Armenians, for example, do not come from Armenia, which is the compact territorial homeland of the Eastern Armenians, but are descended from a people who lived for centuries scattered across the Ottoman Empire (although for a long period they constituted a majority in medieval Cilicia). They were forced to flee from Turkey after the genocide of 1915, but their initial dispersal in Asia Minor dates back to the Seljukid invasions of the 11th century.

The Aromanians, for their part, arose from the descendents of many eastern Latin-speaking groups found throughout the southern Balkans since the early centuries AD – whereas the Romanians are descended chiefly from the Romanised Dacians (also speakers of Latin, in its local north-eastern variety) who, at the time, constituted a highly compact population north of the Danube.

The Balkan Egyptians, the majority of whom now speak Albanian as home-language, are thought to have descended from the inhabitants of former Egyptian trading posts set up in the Balkans from very ancient times and also from a large contingent of men who came from Egypt in the early 4th century, possibly fleeing persecution by Emperor Diocletian. In the countries of former Yugoslavia they are popularly known as Ashkalis (from Alb. ashk, eshk "wood splinter"). In recent years, however, the term Ashkali has taken on a new meaning, at least in some areas of Dardania/Kosovia, being used to designate people of mixed Rrom and Balkan Egyptian blood since these two peoples have relaxed their former reluctance to intermarry.
While Yiddish-speaking Ashkenazi Jews are well known as much for their philosophy as for their folklore and humour, speakers of Judeo-Spanish, or Djudyo, are less familiar in western Europe for they are now mainly located in Turkey and Greece. Some of them have built their concept of a territory around the idea of Israel, while others resolutely assert a European identity – and it is the latter group who concern us here.

The Sami, on the other hand, also known under the derogative name of Lapps, are relatively familiar – or at least their stereotype is familiar – to most Europeans. They are thought to be the oldest inhabitants of Scandinavia, where they arrived a very long time ago from the Urals. Most significantly they regard themselves as the rightful heirs to vast territories which are travelled by those of them who breed reindeer. More details on each of the peoples listed can be found in the notes at the end of this paper.

Clearly, questions can be asked about how we delimit the concept of a people without a compact territory: for example, should the Assyrian-Chaldeans in Europe be included despite their tiny numbers? Do the Arabs and Amazighs (Berbers and Kabyls) who have settled in Europe qualify for inclusion, given that for several generations and over a period of almost two centuries their forebears lived on the territory of European states (in colonial North Africa which was legally a part of France or Spain), and they now belong to Europe? Surely – as their forebears were, for an unbroken period of more than 150 years, French and Spanish nationals – the current habit of referring to these citizens as being “of immigrant origin” is a nonsense. On the basis of their history and the fact that their languages, namely Maghrebi or Darja Arabic and Tamazight, are not official languages of any state, some French authorities classify these tongues as languages of France not associated with a compact territory. And what about the Moluccans? They should probably not be included, given that they are present only in the Netherlands. The question is even trickier with regard to groups who speak the languages of other former colonies and have now settled in Europe, and to the “micro-minorities” scattered within particular countries or regions, such as the Mercheros in Spain and the Camminanti in Sicily. On the other side, our contacts with Kurds have shown that, at least so far, they feel they belong to Kurdistan and that their residence in Europe is temporary. In any event, the problem of categorical distinctions is a familiar one in the human sciences and a salutary reminder of the infinite flexibility of our species, which cannot be reduced to any mechanical or dehumanising system of classification.

To summarise, the reference features common to what we will call here “peoples without a compact territory” are the following:

• the fact of being scattered in four or more states, given that people found in three or fewer states may well have a compact territory in the border zone) and nowhere constituting the majority of the population in a territorial unit larger than a municipality, district or the equivalent;
• a declared wish to cultivate a particular identity (often, although not always, expressed through a specific language or dialect) or indeed a singular lifestyle (like that of the nomadic reindeer breeders among the Sami, or the tin trade as it was formerly practised by many Balkan Egyptians), even if that lifestyle actually involves only a section of the population in question;
• their parallel determination to exist as fully fledged citizens of the State in which they live, and thus their awareness of embodying at least two identities and two cultural heritages, all within a European context.

Of course none of these groups is hermetically sealed – no more than any other nation of the world – and examples of overlap and mixing are legion, from multi-ethnic neighbourhoods, through mixed marriages and mutual influences to the imponderable facts of personal history, so that any attempt to demarcate individuals would be not only reductive but also untruthful. On the other hand, mixed marriages are as a rule not more frequent between two of these groups than between one of them and any other nation. Each of the groups nonetheless exists, with its own specificities and heritage, which may be more or less apparent and emphasised but are in every case undeniable. There is no doubt that human groups are a reality and that they display certain shared features, but when people are considered singly it is rare for all the group features to be found in one individual. Such observations are, of course, not new, since they can be applied to both minority and majority identities the world over.

Names for Rroms

The people without a compact territory who are of chief interest here are the Rroms – proclaimed a European nation without a territory by Dr Emil Ščuka, President of the International Rromani Union, at the Prague Congress of July 2000. With regard to history, the Rroms, who left northern India in 1018, are descended from some 53,000 inhabitants of the city of Kannauj captured by Sultan Mahmud of Ghazni and sold as slaves to merchants from Khorassan, from where they made their way to the Byzantine Empire probably with the Seljuk invaders and thence to Europe and beyond. There is evidence of the word “Rrom” in use as long ago as 1384 (in Lionardo Niccolò Frescobaldi’s account of his travels). While the great majority of the Rroms settled on arrival in the Balkans, where the socio-economic conditions of the time were favourable, those who travelled as far as the Romanian principalities of Moldavia and Ţara Româneasca (or Muntenia, in German Wallachen) were immediately enslaved and thus, for the most part, immobilised – although for various practical, social or legal reasons they often lived in tents (in many cases they were banned from dwelling under a fixed roof). Some continued towards the Carpathian, the Baltic regions and northern Russia where, until the early 20th century, a few retained some degree of mobility, living in tents and travelling in search of work. All of these people, without exception, recognise themselves under the name of Rrom – which is an Indian word probably derived from “Ṛomba” or “Ḍomba” meaning “artist” (in the broadest sense; sometime translated as “percusionist” or “creator”. The initial “Ṛ” and “Ḍ” – in most cases simply variants of the same letter – are properly written with a dot beneath to indicate their retroflexive pronunciation.

Several centuries ago a group split away from the Carpathian and Baltic Rroms and spread throughout the Germanic speaking regions and northern Italy: these were the Sintés. Under Italian influences in the south and Germanic influences in the north, the language of this group gradually developed away from Rromani to the point that mutual comprehension became very difficult, whereas it poses relatively little problem among speakers of the various dialects within Rromani proper. The Sintés continued their westward migration and some Sinté families have now lived for almost 200 years in France where they have largely ceased to use their own language. In dealings with French people they no longer call themselves Sintés, but rather “Manouches”. The word Sinto [the singular form] would seem to be related to the Sanskrit Sindhu, the Arabic Sind, the Persian Hind and the Ionian Greek Indoi – a term that has been used in different contexts to designate not only what is now Sindh but virtually all the provinces of India and the lands to the east of it (Indo-China, Indonesia..); its origin is possibly related to the name of the Indo-Aryan people which settled in the Indus valley and gave their name to the famous river, rather than the other way around. Manuś, on the other hand, is the Indian word meaning “human being”.

A third group branched off at an even earlier date from the common Balkan trunk and, after travelling across most of Europe on foot (with a minor group washing up on the Spanish coast, having been expelled from Byzantium in vessels without oars, sails or rudders), settled in the Iberian Peninsula: these were the Kales (meaning “dark ones”), whom the Spanish called Gitanos. After suffering bloody persecution, particularly in the 17th and 18th centuries, these people abandoned Rromani as their mother tongue and their children grew up speaking Spanish (Andalusian), Catalan and Basque. As teenagers the younger generations began to work with their elders, who still spoke Rromani among themselves, and learned from them a smattering of the ancestral tongue; they then mixed this with their own Spanish, Catalan or Basque, without ever mastering Rromani in its entirety. The secret language that resulted from this fusion is known as kalo or chipi kali, the “black language” and is incomprehensible to speakers of Rromani or Sinto. The kalo spoken in Portugal and Brazil is rooted more in Andalusian than Portuguese. Despite the loss of their language the Kales retain a strong sense of identity as close cousins of the Rroms.

The Rroms who migrated in the Middle Ages from eastern Europe towards Finland are also called Kālés. They speak a variant of Rromani which in its correct (and now almost extinct) form has many archaic features, while its colloquial form (also under real threat) has been greatly modified. The Rroms of the British Isles, meanwhile, are known as Romanishals (from rromani sel [or ćel] meaning “Rromani people”) and speak "paggerdi jib" [the “broken language”, as in “broken English”], which was formed in a similar way to kalo with the use of Rromani words in English sentences. Welsh Rroms still identify as Kales.

Endonymes and exonymes

All the names mentioned thus far are endonymes, i.e. names that the people in question call themselves, with the exception of Gitano, which is the exonym used by the non-Rromani peoples of the Iberian Peninsula for the Rroms who live among them. The [French] word Gitan thus refers exclusively to the Rroms of the Iberian Peninsula, including those who migrated from there to France or the Americas. A title such as Le temps des Gitans [Time of the Gypsies] for a film about Yugoslavian Rroms thus reflects merely the ignorance of a translator with a limited knowledge of Rromani affairs (originally entitled Dom za vešanje [“The hanging institution]”, the film sets out, according to Emir Kusturica, to “explore the most desperate inner circle of the hell that was the Tito regime” [sic]). Like Gypsy, which is another exonyme, Gitano derives from the word Aegupt[an]oi (Αιγύπτιοι > Gypsy, Αιγυπτάνοι > Gitano). Both names reflect the confusion between the Rroms the Crusaders faced in the Holy Land during the Crusades and their Egyptian masters there. An additional confusion was done due to the presence of real Egyptians who had arrived in the Byzantine Empire and especially the Balkan a thousand years before them and are still popularly known as Ashkalis. It is important to emphasise, in discussing exonymes, that these are names applied by a range of people, from farmers, sailors and bank officials to television presenters, who have no connection with Rromani affairs and for whom the identity of peoples without a compact territory has neither interest nor importance. They are not names applied by the people concerned. In principle this use of exonymes should have no major consequences: where problems arise is when people involved with the Rroms on a professional basis profess a similar level of ignorance about their identity. It is thus surprising to observe professionals following common colloquial usages rather than employing the terms actually used by the people in question.

Another very widespread exonyme is tsigane, or ţigan, cigány, cikán, zingari, Zigeuner, цыган, циганин, čigonu, çingene etc, all of these forms being derived from the Greek Athigganoi (Αθίγγανοι) meaning “untouchables”, a name originally given to a wandering Manichean sect that originated in Persia and practiced magic. The members of this sect considered themselves to be “pure” and therefore avoided physical contact with other people, somewhat in the manner of the Bogumils, Patarians, Cathars or Bonsòmes (any analogy with the Indian untouchables thus reflects a total misunderstanding). Having become too powerful in the 9th century Byzantine court, the sect suffered persecution and it disappeared in the early 11th century, although not without leaving a deep impression on the popular imagination. That is why when the Rroms arrived from Asia Minor 100 years later the name was dusted down and applied to them on the basis of superficial analogies (for more information about the Athigganoi see the Byzantine documents appended). Also worthy of mention are a series of euphemistic exonymes ranging from “Bohemian” to “Yugoslavian” via “Hungarian” and “Romanian”, all of which have the function of disguising Rroms behind the name of a widely accepted nation, as if the Rromani identity in itself were somehow shameful. Interestingly the word ciganin (meaning “Gypsy”) was also widely applied to the pillaging outlaws who roamed the ruins of towns and cities in Bosnia-Herzegovina during the war there in the 1990s. In this case a slang term, it referred neither to a people nor to any ethnic identity (in the similar way that the name “Chechens” applied to Albanian mountain folk has no scientific basis). When the word resurfaced at the time of the Albanian exodus from Dardania (i.e. Kosovia/Kosovë and Metohija/Dukagjin) in 1999 and was misunderstood by incompetent journalists and other media people, it resulted in serious violence against Kosovian Rroms, who were innocent of the pillaging attributed to the cigani.

The difference is thus clear between, on the one hand, endonymes, which are precise, definite and pertinent and, on the other, exonymes, which reflect ignorance and sometimes contempt on the part of peoples living alongside the Rroms, and are based on vague resemblances, real or imagined. While the insulting connotations of certain exonymes in many languages are flagrant (cigániť means “to lie”, to gyp “to swindle” and cigančiti “to beg, to skimp or to be stingy”, in Slovakian, English and Serbo-Croat respectively, and there are parallels in Russian, Hungarian, Spanish with gitanear, and French with the disparaging use of the word gitan to describe, for example, fake “designer” gear on sale at street markets3), what is really damaging is the chilly indifference and would-be pragmatism of politicians and do-gooders who fail to distinguish between entirely unrelated identities: different groups of Rroms are lumped together with Beás, Ashkali Egyptians, Travellers or Jenisch into “categories” that are appropriate to none of them, solely on the basis of misapprehensions stemming from ignorance and contempt on the part of Medieval Europeans. Yet to make distinctions between peoples and to identify them properly is to afford them recognition, and that in turn is a step towards affording them respect. It also means giving them the space to assert and develop their own identities, to which they are entitled regardless of medieval labels that they have not been permitted to shed. What would be the reaction if the French, for example, were labelled “infidels”, or “heathens” – terms formerly applied to Europeans by half the peoples of the word? And should this would-be popular realism extend to confusing Armenians and Jews under the single label of “Yahudis” because such is the uninformed usage common in the Balkans? The purpose of knowledge is to let us move beyond the vague impressions we inherit from the past, and to help us examine those impressions in the light of hard facts, drawing reasoned conclusions capable of informing genuine political discourse as a prelude to action. If knowledge of history can illuminate our approach to other peoples, it can illuminate our approach to the Rroms. Sadly, as Ian Hancock has pointed out, there is a lesser expectation of scientific rigour in “Gypsy” research than in other branches of ethnology and this reflects a racist attitude on the part of certain academics. History offers many examples of how confusion in the way that people are categorised can lead to persecution and sometimes to bloodshed – as on numerous occasions in former Yugoslavia since the beginning of the 1990s – and those who sustain confusion thus carry a heavy responsibility.

The endonymes tend to suggest positive values – identity, culture, language, folklore, and indeed the Rromani contribution to the European spirit – whereas the exonymes evoke socially negative characteristics. Even though the terms “Gypsy” and “Gitano” are used to describe a style of music, they clearly also carry a cultural resonance that is both of a lesser order and more stereotypical than the term “Rrom”. There is certain logic at work here for an endonyme expresses an interior perspective that necessarily takes account of identity, heritage and language, as part of the real and familiar experience of the people concerned. Exonymes, on the other hand, reflect an outside perspective, ignorant of the heritage in question, which the outsiders neither know nor take into account, and such is a normal reaction to a culture that has been underrated and poorly promoted – obviously because it was held in contempt. At best, this heritage will be regarded as a product scarcely more coherent than a kind of folklore, or as something “virtual”, the existence of which is postulated in the abstract on the anti-racist principle that all human groups are expected to have their own heritage. Most exonymes, however, are based on perception of a disadvantaged group, similar in some ways to the homeless, drug addicts or other marginalised sections of the population, and not on the concept of an identity entirely equal with that of other peoples, and a legitimate source of pride. While it is normal for young Slovenians, Bretons or Danes to aspire to become great Slovenians, Bretons or Danes, one can hardly imagine a similar aspiration to become a great homeless person or a great drug addict. To turn the idea round, it is conceivable that a country should take pride in its Rroms and show that pride, just as it might take pride in its mountain folk or in any minority, but it is hard to imagine it taking pride in its drug addicts, its prison inmates or its prostitutes – yet if we survey the focuses of pride in different countries, we find that Rroms rarely feature on the list, despite the undeniable contribution they have made to the countries in question. Is this an over-statement of the case? Sadly not, for the parallels are well attested to. In the introduction to a recently published book regarded as authoritative, we read the following: “We have tried not to divorce treatment of the ‘Gypsy question’ from the general attitude towards other minorities, beggars, tramps and, indeed, lepers and the mentally disturbed” [editorial translation] (ISBN 2-13-038823-x p. 12). The exonymes in question thus tend to suggested association with this second series of categories, rather than with the idea of a people – even where universal equality of rights and dignity is not in question. Even well known humanists have fallen into the trap of ignorance of the Rromani heritage. Hannah Arendt wrote in 1966, for example, “Would the death of the Jews have been a lesser evil if they had been a people without a culture, like, for example, the Gypsies, who were also exterminated?” [our italics, editorial translation]. The reality is that exonymes invite compassion and charity, whereas endonymes suggest an approach based on recognition and justice.

Politically correct racism and the confusion of “Gypsy” and “Rrom”

Of course, there is the option of changing the usage by banning terms such as “Tsigane” or “Gypsy”. Several countries have done so, without effecting any major change in the circumstances of the persons concerned. As we have seen, however, it is not so much the terms themselves that can express racism, contempt and the seeds of exclusion but rather the high-handed lumping together of various peoples under a single catch-all heading – in other words, the categorisation of human beings on the basis of their shared rejection by others. This was the dynamic at work in France in 1912 when a parliamentary bill proposed the introduction of the infamous “carnet anthropométrique” [anthropometric checklist], intended for use by the gendarmes and placing all “Romanichels” on the level of known criminals. In this initiative for racism on a massive scale, the victims could not be designated by any ethnic name for fear of infringing Article 1 of the sacrosanct French Constitution. For this reason the meaning of the word “nomad” was twisted (it originally meant a travelling shepherd) and used to signify a body of people, no longer regarded as an ethnic group, who were henceforth to spend decades burdened by a presumption of criminality. These same “nomads” were later to be dumped by the Vichy regime in 32 camps in France where they suffered persecution and many died of cold, hunger and disease. Understandably, in the post-war period it was deemed politically correct to replace the term “nomads” by “Gens du voyage” [“Travelling People”] or “Voyageurs” [“Travellers”] but fundamentally nothing had changed: the abbreviation gdv [for Gens du voyage] was used, for example, as a margin note in certain social security registers to single out claimants who fell into this category – an instance of (de-ethnicised and therefore constitutional) discrimination raising its head again, just as in 1912.

Many people have simply insisted and continue to insist, without any attempt to understand the implications of such an arbitrary gesture, that the term “Gypsy” should be replaced by “Rrom”. One of the first to take this line was Marshall Tito but, while his intentions were probably good, he was merely substituting one word for another in a simplistic and mechanical way without real consideration of the issue. In the intervening years this facile solution has been ever more widely adopted. Examples range from the simplistic equation of ideas – as on one of the main “Gypsy” websites which refers to “Gypsies, more politically correctly known as Roma” – to an ironic negation of identities as when Petra Kovacs writes that “the two groups [Rroms and Egyptians] expend a great deal of energy cultivating what Freud called the narcissism of minor difference … "[our italics, editorial translation], despite having previously devoted several pages to accounts by both Rroms and Egyptians of the many distinctions between them. She ends by stating that "in the final analysis, Egyptians and Rroms live beyond the colour bar in Albania and are regarded by the majority as being alike” – which is factually inaccurate, for ordinary Albanians are quite well aware of the difference between Rroms and Evgjits (Egyptians).

Similarly, a no less serious researcher than Serbian Dr Biljana Sikimić could write in a recently published article entitled “Banyash culture in Northern Serbia” that “Banyash from Serbia do not accept the term ‘Rroms’ and consider it appropriate only for Rromani language speakers.” She points out that an amulet known to Serbians as a “ušav” and to Romanians as a “baer” is found among the Banyash but is not part of the Rromani tradition. Unlike the Rroms, the Banyash do not venerate the goddess Bibia; there are no Rromani words in their language and no elements of Rromani mythology in their culture. The author nonetheless insists on referring to the Banyash as “Rroms”, although she hesitates to classify them as “Sava basin Romanians” or “Walachian or Romanian Rroms”. Surely the simplest thing would have been to call them “Banyash” (or Beás, or Rudari, which are merely variants of one another and are the names by which the people concerned recognise themselves)? By contrast, in a very interesting study entitled “Rudarii, Baieşii şi Lingurarii” a Beás academic from Timişoara, Ms Letitia Mark, concludes that the Beás or Rudari “share their origins with the Romanian people and language”. In fact, the Beás or Rudari would seem to have originated as the South Danubian branch of an ancient Latin-speaking community in the Balkans, in some respects a missing link between the ancestors of Dacian Romanians and those of the Aromanians. The latter are sometimes also known as Moesian Romanians because they lived in Upper Moesia – now southern Serbia – which had a Latinate culture by the end of the last century BC, and were dispersed when the Slavs arrived.

Can we really accept the negation of individual identities and their fusion into an imprecise concept originated many years ago by people generally hostile to the cultures in question, if not downright racist? The whole thing becomes somewhat absurd when we consider that the Japanese, at the other side of the world, can make a distinction between the words “ヅプツー [jipushī], or gypsy” referring to the romantic stereotype and “ロマニツェル人 [romanisherujin], or Rrom” designating the Rroms as a “distinct people”. It may be that distance lends a more serene perspective to the whole issue. More interestingly, from our point of view, a distinction is made in India between, on the one hand, the Romanā log ["Rromani people”] – the 10 million Europeans of Indian origin, known through the population of a Belgrade neighbourhood that Jawaharlal Nehru once visited and by a delegation whom Indira Ghandi received in Chandigar on 20 October 1983 – and, on the other hand, the group known in Indian English as “Gypsies” who have absolutely no connection with the Romanā log but are actually more or less marginalised people (many of them homeless), who were labelled “Gypsies” by the British colonial police in the 19th century because they matched their racist conception of the British “Gypsies”. They have, quite evidently, nothing to do with the Rroms.4 In modern India – a country still steeped in the heritage of generalised Victorian stereotyping – the word “Gypsy” entirely fails to evoke the wail of Bohemian violins and is, indeed, rarely associated with any European people, evoking, by contrast, these groups of pariahs at the bottom of the caste system.

Name series

In attempts to avoid the use of reductive exonymes such as “Gypsy” or “Tsigane” there has been a growing trend in recent years towards the use of series of names including “Rroms/Gypsies”, “Rroms/Tsiganes/Travellers, “Roms, Ashkalis and Egyptians”, “Roma/Beás”, “Roma and Roma-related groups” (a variant favoured by the OSCE), “Roma, Sinti, Egyptians, Ashkalis, Rudari and other groups commonly referred to as ‘Gypsies’” (from a project carried out for the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights in 2002), “Roma-Sinti and Ashkali” and “Rroms and various groups traditionally equated with them” (without specifying that the tradition responsible for the equation was that of ignorance).

It is known that the Beás and Ashkalis, to take just two examples, refuse point blank to be classified as Rroms – except, perhaps, in individual cases and for career-related reasons, which is an aspect we shall consider later. Particularly in former Yugoslavia – following a brief period in which some Balkan Egyptian activists worked for acceptance of the joint classification with the Rroms – we can now see a very clear rejection of this borrowed identity, in favour of the true Egyptian one. In Croatia, where the Bajaši [Beás] were re-named “Romi” instead of “Cigani” by the Tito regime, they continue to refuse this enforced assimilation, however laudable its original intent. While the most militant Bajašis will simply reject the label “Rrom”, other activists will make a distinction between “Romi-Bajaši” and “baš-Romi” (ie Rroms proper). When one informs them that they are not in fact Rroms they will listen, hesitate and question – whereas Rroms, whether or not they are speakers of Rromani, will respond with angry indignation at any such presumption. This neatly illustrates the identity crisis that continues to dog the Bajaši as a result of the refusal, whether well or ill intentioned, to recognise their specificity.

It is understandable that some should find it risky in their political career to assert too blatantly an identity held in disdain, rather than that of a people who (while singled for social injustice – or sometimes because of such injustice – and despite all the imprecision we have discussed) are, after all, relatively well known. At the same time, there can be an element of sophistry in a Bajaši's assertion of Rromani identity, as for example in the indignant question: “Am I not entitled to be a Rrom [or Rromni]?” Leaving aside the fact that life is not always governed by entitlements, the answer to the question is simple: “Yes, you as an individual have the right to call yourself a Rrom – it is a right recognised by the OSCE and its member states – if such is your wish, just as you have the right to call yourself Irish, or Maltese, but you cannot at the same time declare all the Bajaši, or all the Egyptians, or all the Irish or Maltese for that matter, to be Rroms.”

To regard the Beás as Rroms who have lost the Rromani language is, moreover, to project onto them a Jewish perception of the diaspora, equating them with the Jews who adopted the languages of the countries in which they found themselves, notably Arabic, Spanish and German. To do this is to forget that the respective histories of the peoples in question are very different. Unlike the Jews of the diaspora, who were cut off from their geographical roots, the Beás have always lived alongside Rromani-speaking Rroms, and there is no reason why only a section of a population living in contact with the speakers of its supposed mother tongue should have lost that tongue. In addition, Beás of various countries share between them language similarities which could not be explained if they had lost Rromani separately in the areas where they live now.

The Jenisch, for their part, will readily declare themselves to be travellers but bluntly reject any suggestion of a common identity with the Rroms – whom they refer to as “Hungarians”, irrespectively if they originate from Russia or Greece. They argue that it is mistaken (irrtümlich) to confuse them with Sintés or Rroms. In France the situation is complicated by the fact that some Manouches, influenced by French Jacobinism, by the loss of their ancestral language and by the fact of their mobility, perceive themselves as closer to the Jenisch, or to fairground folk, than to Rroms, whereas in reality they share their origins with the Rroms – whom, ironically, they too describe as "Hungarians". For these Manouches, identity is linked first and foremost to lifestyle, rather than language or culture, a reflection of the fact that they have assimilated the official French taboo with regard to ethnic identities. This parallels in some respects the habit in rural areas of former Yugoslavia of linking identity primarily with religion – hence the assertion by Orthodox Bunjaši [Beás] that they are Serbs.

It requires no special insight to recognise that the name series are merely makeshift devices for recycling the old label of “Gypsy” and thus expressing, albeit more discreetly, the racist categorisation described above. Only one of these name series (Rroms/Sintés/Kalés) respects the identities involved, for it does not seek to lump together, from an outsider’s perspective, groups whose only shared characteristic is a historical stigma imposed by country bumpkins (to counter stereotype with stereotype). In fact the term Rroms/Sintés/Kalés refers to the three major branches of the same Rromani population in the broad sense.

The perverse nature of an identity built on discrimination and stigma

The only basis for all the other name series is the fact that the peoples concerned suffered the same racist insults. While this might constitute a “bonding factor” it does not amount to a shared identity. Apart from the common insult of “Gypsy”, “Tsigane” or similar terms, these groups contemptuously tarred with a single brush by simple village people have no shared characteristics. To consider the process from another angle, no criteria were applied to distinguish such people from other peoples without a compact territory – and indeed the medieval villagers responsible for the labelling were unaware that such peoples existed beyond the confines of their own area. In fact it is possible to apply different groupings that are not merely alternative versions of a distinction between “Gypsies” and other peoples without a compact territory. The Rroms, the Western Armenians, Jews and Jenisch, for example, have all been the victims of official genocide in the course of the last century, which was not the case with the Aromanians, Balkan Egyptians, Sami or Travellers – although Sami and Travellers suffered fierce persecution in their respective countries. (An extreme example of genocidal lunacy was the massacre “by mistake” of entire families of Bajaši, most of them ordinary country people, in the Croatia of Andrija Artuković.) Another grouping can be made on the basis that the Jews, Rroms, Sami and Armenians all have a substantial mother-tongue literature, unlike the other groups. Or alternatively, the Jews and Rroms – followed a long way behind by the Armenians and Aromanians – are very widely dispersed in Europe, which is not the case with the others. Rroms, Sami, Beás and, indeed, Aromanians, have their own anthems, unlike the Travellers, Jenisch, Balkan Egyptians and Western Armenians. Further groupings are feasible according to whether, for example, a people has its own distinctive cuisine or style of music, and religious affiliation as a criterion would produce different patterns again. At an anecdotal level, it is interesting here to recount a legend collected by Marko Cepenkov in Macedonia around 1860: it recounts how St Peter – carrying out Christ’s instruction to bring back to life a Gypsy and an Aromanian who had decapitated one another in a fight – accidentally sewed the two heads onto the wrong bodies. “Let them wear the heads they have now,” was Christ’s comment. “It does not matter who was the Gypsy and who was the Aromanian.” It would be difficult to find an example of fairer treatment – or a more intimate blending of identities. But all these groupings are ignored: the only one that matters from the popular racist perspective is that based on stigmatisation by people who knew no better.

With regard to the “nomadic” aspect often advanced as a justification for the lumping together of different peoples, the failure to discriminate between Rroms and other “Gypsies” is generally invalid except at a very local level. The fact of having a mobile lifestyle links a small number of Rroms (3-4 % of the Rromani population of Europe) with the Travellers and the Jenisch but not at all with the sedentary Beás-Rudari and Balkan Egyptians – who, by contrast, resemble the Rroms in that all three tend to live as settled but marginalised groups. If we take discrimination as a criterion, we have to admit that the Sami were, for centuries, the victims of cultural discrimination (notably through the ban on traditional Yoik chanting) and indeed their physical existence was also threatened. Similarly the Aromanians were held in contempt in Greece, as evidenced by the fact that a form of their name is one of the prime insults in modern Greek, and only a few decades ago right-wing political parties mounted ideological crusades against their language. Armenian children continue to suffer echoes of trauma from the genocide of 1915, and no one can deny that anti-Semitism still scars the cultural landscape of many countries even if its expression has become taboo. It also goes without saying that discrimination in different forms is practised against many other minorities, immigrants, women and others apart from the peoples without a compact territory.

The fact is, and it is a point well made by Rudolf Kawczyński, that the continued use of name series as a perverse designation of the five identities that correspond to the notion of “Gypsy/Tsigane” harks back to the racist perception of the 19th century that “race defines the way that people live: that is why we are stereotyped and why they [the groups in question] are stereotyped”, albeit with variants in different parts of Europe, as we have noted. Behind the new labels for an old idea, adds Kawczyński, “the real label that all these peoples share is that of 'a-social group': no one dares to utter it, for it is taboo, but it is more or less the general perception” (from an address to the Council of Europe in September 2003).

Surely it is not feasible to construct an identity on the basis of a stigma? To attempt to do so is maybe to doom to failure an initiative intended to be humanistic? What is the point of doggedly maintaining an outdated and racist concept, dressed up in off-the-peg politically correct vocabulary? Why should we accept the idea that a number of distinct groups, each with its own history, way of life and identity, sometimes a language of their own, can be lumped together with the Rroms on the basis of similarities between those groups have, not with the genuine Rroms, but with the medieval peasant's image of the Rroms? Why not distinguish, and thus respect, the different identities, while at the same time cultivating the greatest possible measure of solidarity among them, and indeed between them and the rest of humanity, without fear or favour? As the Romanian Beás writer Letiţia Mark has put it, “Our diversity must not be used to divide us when it comes to action.” Solidarity can find expression either through cooperation on a basis of equality, with mutual recognition of different identities, or indeed through commitment to the cause of a minority other than one’s own: Beás-Rudari, for example, have taken up the Rromani cause because they feel that they and the Rroms have a common destiny – a much more positive attitude than that of certain Ashkalis, who seek to assert their own identity through overt opposition to the Rroms. Such commitment should, however, be possible without prejudice to the individual’s own identity, and that condition can be met only if the concepts involved are universally clear.

A particular name series: Rroms/Sintés/Kalés

The name series Rroms/Sintés/Kalés, highlighted above, has a variant in Germany, namely “Roma and Cinti” (although the distinction between these two groups, both of Indian origin and speaking related languages, was greatly exaggerated by nazi propaganda) but once we move to European level it is essential to add the Kalés and to use the full formula, “Rroms, Sintés and Kalés”. In fact, although there are only a few isolated Kalés in Germany, they number well over a million in the European Union as a whole. The term “Roms and Sinti”, used by the OSCE in its activities in relation to the groups concerned, and copied uncritically from the German usage, is thus unacceptable because it excludes the Kalés. The only real alternatives are, on the one hand, “Rroms [in the narrow sense], Sintés and Kalés” and, on the other “Rroms” [in the broad sense] to cover all three peoples – the actual demographic breakdown being roughly as follows: Rroms, in the narrow sense, 88 %; Sintés, 23 %; Kalés, 9-10 %. Due to its present derogative value, the word Romanichal, albeit quite proper in its meaning of “Rromani people”, can not be used in this last meaning.

The French approach

It must be admitted that the approach taken by the French national education system has a certain consistency: it lists “Forains [fairground folk], Circassiens [Circus people], Bateliers [barge folk], Rroms, Sinté, Kalé, Yeniches, Voyageurs” and others as “communautés de voyage” [travelling communities] – and we must bear in mind here that the Education Ministry still refuses to take account of ethnocultural or linguistic identities. This listing of Rroms, Sintés and Kalés with non-Rroms engaged in itinerant jobs, while it ought to specify “those Rroms, Sintés and Kalés who are mobile”, given that only one in five of these people in France actually has a mobile lifestyle, at least has the merit of including all mobile groups without any ethnic singling out of “Gypsies” either directly or under cover of a euphemism. It is important to continue to recognise the existence of a category of people who have a mobile lifestyle, irrespective of their national, cultural, linguistic or other identities, and to give them a specific name such as “travelling people” or “occupational travellers”. Such an approach would be fair, however, only if the official focus were solely on way of life, without any consideration of identity or any attempt to connect “travelling people” to any specific cultural, linguistic or ethnic heritage. In practice, though, this is not the case, and the word “traveller” soon came to be used in place of “Rrom” for reasons of political correctness – a trend that produced the ultimate absurdity when reports appeared of a group of Hungarian “travellers” visiting France, the people in question being as evidenced later Beás who are sedentary in all countries. Thus there had been a shift in meaning from “travellers”, a French euphemism for Rroms, to tabooed Gypsies, including through politically correct “Rroms” also the Beás... In fact, the Hungarian Rroms, apart from a small number who arrived in the 19th century after 30 years of travelling in search of acceptable living conditions, have had a settled lifestyle since the middle Ages, and the Beás have never been mobile. The only way to divest the concept of “travelling people” of any ethnic connotation whatsoever would be to recognise independently the existence of a specific Rromani identity, without reference to mobility.

Consequences of the Rrom/Traveller confusion in France and elsewhere

In practice, the fact of lumping Rroms and “Tsiganes” together under the heading of “travelling people” can have damaging consequences even in peacetime, as for example when there is effective discrimination against Rroms from other countries who arrive as refugees or otherwise. As Rroms they are regarded differently from other foreigners and downgraded to the lowly category of “travelling people” – but because they are not, in fact, mobile they cannot actually benefit from provision for those who are (for instance, recognition by the national education system). Likewise, in certain divorce proceedings in Germany petitioners have applied the label “Zigeuner” to their spouse, which the courts have interpreted as “traveller” with the result that the spouse thus labelled has lost custody of any children – whereas in fact the families in question have been settled in the same location for centuries. If such decisions are unacceptably discriminatory against genuine “travelling people”, they are totally aberrant when directed at Rroms who have normal urban lifestyle.

Confusion between the concepts of “Rroms” and “travelling people” also has the effect of undermining lobbying activities on behalf of both groups because it facilitates the tactic of mutual rejection by demagogues who will latch onto a specific characteristic, depending on what is at stake in the particular circumstances, to eliminate a supposed competitor. A Rrom may be dismissed as a gadjo [non-Rrom] because he or she lives in an apartment block, while persons with an entirely or partly mobile lifestyle may be discounted because they are not of Rromani origin.

In a different context, the failure to distinguish between Rroms and non-Rromani speaking peoples can leave scope for a different type of manipulation practised by some official bodies at what are billed as joint “Rromani” seminars or forums. If debates are conducted in the majority language this allows the authorities a greater degree of control over informal exchanges. On various occasions the author has noted the deliberate nature of this policy on the part of some organisers, but even where no deliberate intention is involved the fact of excluding Rromani from the debating chamber deprives its speakers of many opportunities to develop their use of the language in discussion of current issues, and forces Rroms into the habit of thinking about the world in a language that is not their own. We should therefore salute the Council of Europe’s practice of integrating Rromani into many of its debates through the use of simultaneous interpretation.

Confusion imposed by powerful benefactors

On the other hand, it is particularly perverse when public and private organisations impose a confusion of identities, in effect applying the same old stigma in various guises and against the will of those concerned, who are fully capable of making the relevant distinctions. Nonetheless, this is what happens under the pretext of preserving a presumed common identity – which in fact only ever existed in the imagination of certain would-be progressive bureaucrats and, perversely, that of grass-roots racists. Thus, for example, the World Bank made a research grant conditional on acceptance by the institute responsible that the research should cover extreme poverty among Rroms and Egyptians – despite protests by both groups. In the countries concerned, Rroms and Egyptians are no more affected by extreme poverty than certain other sections of the population (victims of rural exodus for example), so what we have here is an example of well-meaning bureaucrats redefining respectable, and in many cases respected, identities as social problems.

Some observers have compared the blurring of identities among the groups in question, who in reality have no more in common than an insulting exonyme, with the melt-down in the United States of a whole range of identities under the single label of “Latino” – the tactic being to sew maximum confusion as a means of retaining maximum control. The familiar “divide and rule” (podeli pa vladaj) is compounded by “confuse and rule” (zbuni pa vladaj) in a situation that could be aptly described as a “Bosnian stew” (bosanski lonac) – and the idea of cooking up a similar Euro-stew of “Tsiganes” and other “Gypsies” has nothing to commend it.

Politically correct negation

There are those, however, who argue in support of such an approach. There are various examples of “vox pops” – such as those of Emigh and Szelenyi in Bulgaria, Hungary and Romania; and Cahn, another researcher, informs us (without looking too closely at the reality or heeding the protests of his research subjects) that Albanian Rroms are unsure of their identity.5 The point of the allegation remains unclear. Similarly a recent UNDP report states that "Roma ethnicity is a fluid concept”. One can legitimately argue that it is indeed fluid but not more or less so than any other identity – because fortunately all living ethnicities are fluid concepts and the alternative to such fluidity is nationalistic introspection and hatred. Noting that the number of people identified as Rroms by the surrounding population is greater than the number of self-identified Rroms, these researchers failed to grasp that for certain gadjés the term “Rrom”, presented as the politically correct equivalent of “Gypsy”, covers Beás, Rudari and Ashkalis, who are not Rroms, whereas Rroms themselves understand the term in its strict (and accurate) sense. The researchers believed they had uncovered a paradox because their findings were the inverse of those they had obtained for other nations: there were more self-identified Ukrainians, for example, than Ukrainians perceived as such by Russians. The simple reason for this, however, was the superficial nature of the Russians' perception, failing to recognise the Ukrainians as such: it is likely that the respondents in the survey had only a distant relationship with Ukrainians, that they spoke Russian with them and that they were unaware of their actual identity. The relevance to Rroms of the implication here would seem slight, particularly as many Rroms, notably among immigrant workers in western European countries, are never perceived as Rroms but rather as Yugoslavians, Bulgarians, Greeks or members of other nationalities. It is surprising that researchers should continue to present such mechanisms as enigmatic and it is difficult to imagine that they do so through ignorance or naivety. What is genuinely enigmatic is the purpose of their research.

The UNDP researchers conclude that “as a racially stigmatised group, the Roma's status is ascribed externally, by others”, and the report adds that “outsiders tend to classify individuals as Roma based on such social characteristics as whether they are poor, uneducated, and live in large households” – thus confirming that the notion of a “Gypsy” identity, which is the subject of their inquiries, is in fact genuinely racist. Ultimately, whether they dress that notion up under the politically correct designation of “Rrom”, as they do to nonsensical effect in their text, or whether they present it frankly under the label of “Gypsy” or “Tsigane”, which would at least make the text coherent, what we have here is no more than an example of terminological sleight of hand, for the perspective is essentially racist in both cases. The only accurate aspect of the conclusion is that “the Roma's status is ascribed externally, by others" – the others in question being initially the medieval peasantry and subsequently the UNDP, donor bodies and organisations such as the Council of Europe and OSCE, who are, in fact, usurping the right of the persons concerned to define their own identity. The usurpation is only emphasised by the fact that one can always find certain Rroms, Beás or Ashkalis (or indeed immigrants, inhabitants of colonies or rural dwellers) who are prepared to assume the identity that will be advantageous to them. The same Croatian Bajaš woman who declared herself as such in peremptory fashion at an international conference in Budapest in July 2003 asserted three months later in Strasbourg that she was a “Romkinja”. In response to the other participants’ astonishment she offered the justification that she had been obliged to present herself in this way because “there are two ladies from the ministry here”. Nothing could be more absurd: the author is acquainted with the ministry representatives concerned and knows them to be both open-minded and in favour of the distinction between Rroms and Bajaš.

Clearly, therefore, the substitution of terms – particularly that of “Rrom” for “Gypsy” is not only, at best, the product of ignorance, but it also has very serious consequences, paving the way as it does for effective negation of the identities of the five peoples without a compact territory. The UNDP report continues: “[…] the criteria for identifying the highly stigmatised Roma differ from those used to identify other ethnic groups. […] These results illustrate that much more research is needed to clarify who the Roma are. They also suggest that the causality between poverty and ethnicity needs to be examined”. The answer to the question of who the Rroms are is, however, straightforward.

1. All Rroms know that they are Rroms;
2. there is no relationship between poverty and Rromani ethnicity;
3. and any research into this issue will merely confirm the obvious.

All grass-roots contacts indicate that those concerned can distinguish perfectly clearly between Rroms and, for example, Beás. Thus, in Hungary, if you arrive at one end of a village (or telep) where Rroms are settled and ask them in Rromani “Are there only Rroms here?” you will frequently receive the reply, “Oh no, there are Beás too, but on the other side of the road.” The inverse is equally true, for the Beás will tell you, in their own language, that “There are Colompars [literally “bell-makers”, ie Rroms, the other term being Lăcătars] not far away.” Similar replies are equally normal in areas inhabited by Rroms and Ashkali Egyptians in former Yugoslavia, or Rroms, Rudari, Hungarians and Moldavians in Romania. In Croatia, Bajaši leaders of independent (ie those who have not been involved in Tito's politics) say: "We do not have anything in common with those who sing Gelem gelem [the Rromani hymn]". As a matter of fact, the Rudar-Beás have their own hymn (Frunze verde "Green leaves").

The question thus remains a question only if one obstinately refuses to answer it in a manner that takes heed of the people concerned – not just the Rroms but also the other peoples without a compact territory. Yet the researchers need to confess frankly the reality of their refusal to take heed (which represents denial of a right) and the consequent refusal to correct the terminology (which represents dereliction of a duty). We could do so by rewording the UNDP report to read: “These results illustrate that much more research is needed to clarify who the Gypsies are. They also suggest that the causality between poverty and [a hypothetical Gypsy] ethnicity needs to be examined. ”

Clearly, the UNDP text, if taken literally, is implicitly negationist for it refuses to recognise the Rromani identity or proposes that it be reduced to the concept of poverty. By contrast, if we replace the word “Rroms” throughout by “Gypsies”, the same text demonstrates plainly that there is no "Gypsy" ethnicity and that not only the word but also the idea it expresses (however it is labelled) are part of the tired stock of racist perspectives on the world. If a group of people – call them Gypsies or call them by a euphemism, name series or whatever – is distinguished on the basis of immediate impressions and characteristics visible to others who know nothing about them (skin colour or the fact of their being poor or marginalised, for example), thus almost automatically inviting stereotyping, that distinction is racist. If, on the other hand, the distinction is based on cultural characteristics – which pre-supposes getting to know the people concerned in order to become familiar with those characteristics – it is no longer a reflection of racism but of respect instead and it lead to the appreciation of different cultures.

What price an individual’s career?

Working at grassroots level, we find if we question the custodians of traditional knowledge – whether among the Rroms or other groups – perfect clarity with regard to the distinctions between the groups. On the other hand, if we talk to certain professional activists of Beás, Jenisch or Ashkali origin, we find that some have begun to use the word “Rrom” as a politically correct substitute for “Gypsy”, and declare themselves to be Rroms. Is this evidence of a deeper insight into ethnic realities, acquired through a process of personal research and reflection on the identities in question, or does it represent no more than the opportunistic appropriation of a dominant ideology, including its accompanying stereotypes? Regrettably it is the latter – compounded in many cases by an understandable element of careerism. It is hardly surprising that certain local leaders who, when they began their careers, were identified as Rroms – a label better known and easier to assert than certain others – should not wish to be seen doing a U-turn, or at least that they should fear a loss of standing by calling their own achievements into question. Some have done so, and we should salute their courage, particularly as they rarely get the support they deserve. It is quite understandable that a person, in the context of a career based to some extent on ethnicity, should take the individual decision to assume an identity that is already widely recognised (and to which he or she can make a valuable professional contribution) rather than embarking on a lonely battle against the tyranny of received ideas in order to promote and win recognition for an identity hitherto virtually unknown. To do so would be to risk fighting on two fronts, whereas fighting on one is quite hard enough. It is not difficult to imagine how a Beás might contribute to the Rromani cause, or a Rrom to the Beás cause, or indeed how either might lend their weight to other causes such as those of the Sami or Berbers. It is even conceivable that individuals in such situations should identify with their adopted causes and, under the conception of ethnicity promoted by the OSCE, they have the right to do so. This does not signify, however, that all the Beás as a population can be equated with Rroms, or Rroms with Beás, Sami or Berbers. The distinction between personal position and collective identity should never be lost. Jożef Korzeniowski became, under the name of Joseph Conrad, one of the greatest English authors, but that does not mean that the Polish people are English. The Albanian Marko Boçari was, under the name of Botzaris, a hero of the Greek struggle for independence, but that hardly turns the Albanians into Greeks. Without question, writers like Conrad – or Kafka, Beckett, Halter and Avicenne to name but a few others – who espoused a language and culture other than their own, represent a magnificent expression of universal humanity, as do selfless transnational heroes like Boçari.

To consider the issue from a different angle, it is a fact that numerous Jews are involved in Rromani issues, particularly in political institutions in Brussels, Strasbourg, Warsaw and elsewhere. Should we reproach them for their involvement and suggest that they concentrate on Jewish issues? Of course not, for they bring to their task a different type of experience, a different sensitivity and a particular energy – in short they have something to contribute in the business of promoting the Rroms in Europe. But does all this imply that Jews can be equated with Rroms? Obviously it does not. What is expected of individuals in this situation is that they do their job with respect for the facts of Rromani history and culture, and history and culture generally, that they do it competently and honestly, and that they be prepared to listen to Rroms and to pursue the ideal of social progress – in other words, seeking to improve the lives of the people concerned in the broader social context and engaging in all the radical debate which that entails and will continue to entail. What is expected of them is thus no more nor less than what is expected of Rroms who commit themselves to the same task.
To summarise, it is important to distinguish existing identities at a collective level, to place them in a context of mutual respect in the broadest sense (and not, therefore, to diminish them to the effective equivalent of labels for marginal, excluded or disadvantaged sections of society), and to promote solidarity among them (and indeed between them and the rest of society, for it is ultimately in everyone’s interest to do so). It is important – despite any political or other temptations that might tend to blur the picture – to allow individual commitment to different identities, without making it a basis for assumptions about collective identity that fly in the face of history and ethnology.

Nonetheless, there is a problem in the area with which we are concerned and it is this: Beás and Ashkalis are often more ready than many Rroms to "play the political game". As a result, more and more would-be representatives of the Rroms, including at the highest policy-making levels, actually have no connection with them, having been recruited from these groups which are not actually of Rromani origin and therefore do not feel anything special for the Rromani language, culture and heritage. In fact the “community” from which they come is the “Gypsy” community, re-labelled the “Rroms” for reasons of political expediency. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that such “representatives” should subsequently neglect the Rromani language, culture and identity as well as Rromani claims and demands, which are entirely alien to them (something not necessarily detectable to non-Rrom politicians). The leaders in question have, in reality, nothing in common with Rroms apart from the popular label of “Gypsy” and the experience of certain social problems, which are shared right across Europe by groups as diverse as migrant workers and disadvantaged rural communities. Instead of being useful to their “own” minorities, they are usurping decision-making posts that should be occupied by Rroms.

In some countries, members of the Beás or Ashkali communities, whose mother tongue may be a form of Romanian or Albanian, have declared in their capacity as “leaders of the Rroms” that the Rromani language is of no significance to them (and thus of no significance to the Rromani people whom they are supposed to represent), and that the only language they value is that of the national majority. They thus place themselves in a win-win situation for not only is Rromani genuinely unimportant to them, but by asserting this they score points in the eyes of the majority, who are always glad to be rid of minority language issues. Those in power are well pleased with such a show of loyalism and the only ones to lose out are Rroms, who see their language rejected yet again. When, in response to the official position that the rejection stems from their own representatives, the Rroms point out that the “representatives” belong to an unrelated ethnic group, the vicious circle is completed by the authorities' retort (the one they had ready from the outset) that the Rroms themselves are racist, that they cannot agree among themselves and that it is impossible to work with them: their representatives are given a hearing and they are still not satisfied, and in any case they lack the political maturity to participate in civil society and democracy, so the best policy would be to place them under some sort of protective supervision – QED!

Ultimately we arrive at the following paradoxical situation: the Beás, whose representatives defend no specific language, cultural heritage or original world view, and who perceive their own ethno-cultural identity as inferior to that of the Rroms, are regarded by the system as “model Rroms” and “good students”. They may have socio-economic problems but these can be addressed with a mixture of compassion, grant aid and corruption: and there will always be a few stray Rroms prepared to sanction the system. By contrast, the majority of Rroms, with their attachment to their language, culture and identity, will come to be seen as “typical Gypsies” who refuse to integrate (which in this context would imply renouncing their heritage) and as “slow learners” of the new politics.

In a country like Croatia, for example, where 70 % of the “Gypsies” are not Rroms but Bajaši, it is important to appreciate the situation very clearly from the outset if the intention is to give Bajaši children access to education in their mother tongue, in which more and more texts are becoming available. The obvious danger is that they should have imposed upon them the Rromani language and culture, which are entirely alien to them, thus producing situations as ridiculous as that of the Pomaks in Greece. Pomak children receive an education not only in Greek but also in the so-called “mother tongues” of Turkish and Arabic, although their actual mother tongue is a fourth language that has been entirely excluded from the education system.6 While it is true that Bajaši language and culture are very little known, the solution to this is not to replace them en bloc with Rromani language and culture, but rather to carry out the research to which this group of people is entitled, with a view to developing knowledge of their language and identity. It would seem that in Croatia things are moving in the right direction.

To compound the problem described above, the matter of skin colour has assumed particular importance in recent years in the context of efforts to negate or smother the national and/or ethnocultural and linguistic identity of the Rroms. It is a fact that many organisations which have felt the need to appoint a Gypsy “representative” – whom they call a Rrom and who helps to justify their activities (as well as the grant aid they receive) – have selected individuals whose particularly dark skin meets the criterion of visibility, and it is also a fact that this skin tone is found more commonly among Beás than among Rroms. Based as it is on a physical characteristic rather than intellectual values, this criterion further complicates the racism-tinged confusion. It was probably no accident that an article published in Le Monde on 28 May 2002 about the “Gypsy school” at Pécs in Hungary opened with the following description: “Some twenty students, their skin as brown as that of […] their teacher, rhyme off a series of verbs in Beash” – before going on to explain that this “success story [is] the showcase which the authorities like to present to Europe” [editorial translations]. These two extracts sum up the hypocrisy of what is effectively a hotch-potch created in the name of political correctness.

A statistical approach

If we consider the numerical weight of the populations in question, we find that at European level the Rroms, Sintés and Kalés (ie Rroms in the broad sense) constitute around 90 % of the people covered by the name series that function as substitutes for the word “Gypsy”. Moreover, the peoples without a compact territory who are almost never classified as “Gypsies” (namely the Aromanians, Western Armenians and Sami) are outnumbered 30 to 1 by Rroms. The Jewish population is of comparable size if we count only Yiddish and Djudyo speakers, but it becomes impossible to estimate once we include the large but unknown number of Jews who do not have a distinct language and regard themselves simply as citizens of various European countries.

The inclusion under the heading of Rroms of the extra 10 % comprising Ashkalis, Beás, Jenisch and Travellers is justified in some quarters on the basis that their numbers help to swell the Rromani lobby. A self-styled Rromani leader in Macedonia recently explained to the author that he had recruited Ashkalis for the purpose of massaging his figures in the context of making a grant application but he expected to dispense with their assistance, on the grounds that they were not Rroms, as soon as the grant was received. Happily this “strength-in-numbers” approach is now outmoded in Europe, for it has the effect of leaving all small groups out of count and thus of justifying majority oppression of minorities – clearly an affront not only to the aspirations of Rroms and other peoples but also to genuine democracy. Surely it is not acceptable, for statistical reasons, to divest of their rights such human groups that are very small in number, whether they be violin virtuosos, mathematical geniuses, the last of the Mohicans or the victims of injustice or rare disease. Moreover, distinguishing between peoples who have different histories and different identities – even if they have various shared characteristics and have shared other characteristics with other peoples in the past – by no means precludes creating solidarity among them, and that solidarity will be all the more healthy and effective for having a clearly defined basis.

In any event, the fact that the Rroms constitute a huge majority among the peoples without a compact territory (even taking account of those who are not “Gypsies”), while it may help to explain popular confusion of the two notions, does not justify elevating that confusion to the level of a allegedly reasoned and realistic approach. All groups, however tiny, have the right to recognition of their identity inasmuch as it is a fact of their experience. Only ignoramuses will classify Ukrainians as Russians, Armenians as Jews, Berbers as Arabs or Vietnamese as Chinese. Such a model, based as it is on ignorance, which often stems from contempt, is all the more to be condemned because it is prejudicial both to those who accept it and to the peoples concerned.

Enter the Redskins

Anecdotal though it may seem, it is a fact that the age-old confusion between Indians from India and American Indians has directly affected the Rroms. A large number of ordinary people in the countries where Rroms are numerous assume, on hearing mention of the Rroms' Indian origins, that they are cousins of those plumed savages with their feathered arrows, battle axes and blood-curdling war cries who massacred the valiant Anglo-Saxons sent to their country to spread civilisation and democracy. Educated western European urbanites might be shocked that such an image should persist but they may be unaware that TV stations in the countries in question are in the habit of showing old films bought at bargain prices from the USA, films made long before the New World cinematographers mended their ways and decided to stop depicting the winning of the West in this Manichean fashion. Because the confusion between Indians from India and American Indians has not been highlighted, nor even discussed, in the countries concerned, it is hardly surprising that the offensive images on the screen – some of them bordering on cannibalism – should serve as an inspiration to ignorant racists bent on denigrating Rroms. Nor is it surprising that quite a number of Rroms, who are scarcely better informed about Columbus' mistake than their non-Rrom neighbours, should take offence at the association of their people with such "barbarians" and should therefore refute any notion of their having “Indian” connections. Beyond the problems of manipulation which can be compounded by such confusion (and we are likely to be treated in the near future to pseudo-scientific studies demonstrating that “the Rroms” do not accept the idea of their Indian origins, and thus helping to further deny the Rromani identity, while continuing to attract research grants), what we have here is a blatant example of the destructive consequences of a misapprehension. The misapprehension in question dates from 1492, and had the resulting terminology been corrected in time much subsequent lunacy could have been avoided. Surely this is a further argument for eliminating confusion about the identity and names of the peoples without a compact territory at the earliest possible opportunity.

Conclusion

There are three possible solutions to the question.
We retain the notion of “Gypsy/Tsigane” and use it openly to refer to all the groups of people identified as such from the traditional racist perspective – even if it means having to add the further qualifier “a-social”. Attempts have been made to defend such an approach: in Hungary, for example, it has been claimed that certain Rroms prefer the term cigany to Rrom (in Hungarian Roma), but in fact the rejection of the word Rrom was based on its similarity to Roman (meaning Romanian) and thus on a form of racism unrelated to the Rromani question. The respondents were motivated by their impulse to shun the name of a people detested by Hungarians of the lower social strata.7 Luckily such attitudes are now becoming a thing of the past. In Romania – after five centuries of slavery (the Romanian word ţigan evoking the idea of a slave or former slave, and almost of something sub-human, rather than a member of any people) – and also in France, with its institutionalised Jacobinism that refutes the existence of so-called minority languages and cultures, many people including Rroms continue to use the word "Tsigane". While it is argued in some circles that such “sensitivities” should be respected, the author takes the view that it is somewhat hypocritical in this day and age to remain indifferent to the inappropriate use of a term that has been forced upon a population for decades, and to “respect” it without seeking to explain it, as if its use reflected a free and informed choice.

Another option is to retain the same notion of “Gypsy/Tsigane” but to conceal it under cover of a presentable outer wrapping such as “Rrom” in its distorted sense, or a name series. Such an approach would make it difficult to recognise a nation who has contributed to European thinking and who is attempting to gain greater recognition. It is an approach better suited to discussion of social problems and of the need to assist “target groups”, “the disadvantaged” or “marginal populations” – all ideas that have as little to do with the true Rromani identity as they have with simple justice, even though it is true that the vicissitudes of history have effectively demoted certain descendants of an 11th century Indian intellectual and spiritual elite to the bottom of the European social barrel.

Thirdly, we can consider as a specific entity every people without a compact territory (of which there are around 10 in Europe) and look at the features all of them share, and on that basis can foster wide-ranging cooperation between them at European level, as well as exchanges designed to promote mutual understanding and support. This option has the merit of rendering further terminological acrobatics unnecessary because we would refer simply to “peoples without a compact territory”.

In other words, four possible approaches can be taken:

• an approach based on origins and identity, in which Rroms must be identified as such, distinct from any other population group be they Beás, Armenian, Jewish, Jenisch or other, and irrespective of their way of life;
• an approach based on type of settlement, ie on the absence of a compact territory, in which case all the population groups discussed here must be gathered under a single heading, as distinct from the rest of Europe’s peoples (even though the distinction is a fragile one inasmuch as certain peoples who were formerly settled compactly in their own territory have since scattered – the Irish and Occitans being two examples – while others, like the Poles and Albanians, continue to produce very large diasporas, and such situations will become more common as mobility increases in the Europe of tomorrow);
• an approach based on mobility as a group’s defining characteristic, in which case only the Jenisch and Travellers would qualify – most Armenians, Rroms, Jews and other peoples clearly forming part of the settled population;
• an approach based on the racist perspective of medieval peasants and country policemen, distinguishing between, on the one hand, Gypsies, Gitanos, Jenisch and other rootless vagabonds and, on the other, the good people of the realm. One minor adjustment here would be to drop labels like “Rrom” that fail to cover all those in the first category and to acknowledge the racism inherent in such a position by adopting the appropriate terminology. Pluralist societies may well need their racists, but clearly this approach would not be the author’s choice.

The argument here is directed not at banning use of the words “Gypsy” or “Tsigane” but at restoring them to their true sense, as reflections of the way that ill-informed, occasionally romantic and frequently racist strangers perceived various categories of people who were neither interconnected in any real sense nor clearly delimited from other peoples. Use of these words should also be restricted to the appropriate context: they have their place in literature, history and racist polemics, but no place whatsoever in current academic or political debate or in the media. In a recent book by the author of this paper (Les Rroms dans les Belles-Lettres Européennes, Paris, L’Harmattan, 2004), for example, the word “Rrom” is used 593 times, while “Tsigane” occurs 218 times (including in quotations), but at each usage the choice of term reflects the tenor of the message. Where an external, racist or romantic perspective is presented, the term used is “Tsiganes”, but in objective discussion of the people in question it is “Rroms”. The term “Gitano”, which is synonymous with “Kalo”, is relevant only to the branch of the Rromani people who settled on the Iberian Peninsula.

If we can escape the pressures of political expediency – which in former times took precedence over both reality and the wishes of the persons concerned – we must surely take the fairest and most balanced option by drawing a clear distinction between the Rroms and “the various groups traditionally equated to them”; we must acknowledge that each of the identities in question here has equal dignity and we must situate them all within the larger, objective category of European peoples without a compact territory, while encouraging the greatest possible degree of solidarity among them. It is essential that international organisations adopt this perspective without delay, for otherwise their inertia and lack of awareness will implicate them in a destructive process that could have dire consequences.

It should be noted that the form “Rroma” is the plural of “Rrom” in Rromani. It first entered the German language in the expression “Sinti und Roma” [Sintés and Rroms] to designate, more or less, autochthonous and foreign Rromani groups entitled to compensation after the war. This word form was then imported unthinkingly into English where it became the term of choice at the OSCE’s Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR), to be used in an ill-informed (and thus contemptuous) way to describe the millions of Kalés of the Iberian Peninsula and Latin America, who like the Rroms and Sintés are part of the Rromani nation. From here the form “Rroma” entered erroneously into the jargon of non-governmental organisations where it was used in place of “Rrom” as both singular and plural; in fact, in both English and French the correct forms are Rrom for the singular and Rroms for the plural.

Note: In addition to the peoples without a compact territory, there exist in Europe various highly specific minorities that are regarded as restrained even though they may constitute a handful of villages or several thousand souls (examples include the Meglenites in Macedonia and Greece, the Pomaks in Greece and Bulgaria, the Kajnas in Albania, the Rusnaks in Voivodine, the Triesenbergers in Liechtenstein and the Gorans or Dardanian Macedonians). While their particular problems demand a specific approach, we would urge solidarity between them and the peoples without a compact territory, as indeed among all Europeans – the European cause being everyone’s concern.