I only mention this disease (which is not considered a stigma among the Gypsies themselves, (nor should it be) because it was obviously recognized by their ancestors thousands of years ago since among their castes in Old India it was against their tradition to marry a relative within three to five generations.26
Ironically, among the higher Brahmin caste of Old India it was and often still is the tradition to marry first cousins. So who in the end recognized the problem and tried to sort it out? The intellectual high class Brahmin or the low caste supposedly ignorant Gypsies?
Gypsyologists (who contend that after being out of India for so long Gypsy blood has become so diluted that the original DNA has long ago disappeared) should consider asking a Romani piebald to have a DNA test. It would be a wonderful study to help the Roma and Egyptians to know their real original blood lines… which have obviously been saved by the piebalds.
25- D r. Mats J. Olsson’s reply: Yes, your photos show piebaldism. The piebaldism is much less expressed than your numbers. Only about 0.007% (1 individual in 14,000) in the world are affected. This even stronger supports your observations of an over representation of the disease in the Gypsy population. Piebaldism is inherited as an autosomal dominant disorder and in a population that do not mix with other populations it is of course possible to get a high and maintained frequency within the ethnic group. We successfully treat piebaldism with transplantation of pigment cells (melanocytes) here at the University Hospital in Uppsala. Their skin condition can then get cured. But we can of course not change the germ line (i.e. they still give birth to children with piebaldism). Enclosed as an attachment is a text taken from my book: Vitiligo and Piebaldism, Treatment of Leucoderma by Transplantation of autologous melanocytes.
26- The Gond tradition is to marry first cousins. Since many if not most Balkan Gypsies have Gond traditions, except for marrying first cousins, perhaps the odd case of piebaldism among European Gypsies today can be traced back to the Gond intermarrying with the Dom castes, especially the Sansis, before their migration out of Old India.
Chapter 13 THE NOMADIC GYPSIES Despite my association with Gypsies all over Europe, I have never come across the socalled nomadic Gypsies. Of course, I have found Gypsies on the road, travelling from town to town to sell the wares they have made over the winter, or collecting scrap metal, or others seeking seasonal work on farms and in agricultural fields. But these Gypsies always have had a home to return to for the winter. Often their homes are owned by themselves; others are rented. But there is always a place to return to.
Some Gypsies, of course, migrate for good, leaving their so-called ancestral village to seek a better life in a big city or in another country. But until recently it was also the tradition that no matter how far afield they went looking for work and a new life, they always wanted to be buried where their ancestors were buried.
A Gypsy wagon was not the real home for most Gypsies. The wagons were mainly their temporary home while on the road. Of course like some people today who do live in caravans (like myself for many years), there were Gypsies who lived in their wagons, not only on the road but when they got back to base, their so-called ancestral village.
In Italy to this day there is a law covering the “nomadic Gypsies” and their permanent caravan parks. Although these “nomadic” Gypsies have been in Italy for more than 600 years and might live in expensive caravans that have no wheels, they are still called nomadic and by law must have travel insurance on their fixed homes.
Others who actually live in homes are still considered immigrants or refugees despite having citizenship.
Before WWII it was more common to find Gypsies on the road from spring to fall looking for work or to sell their wares. But after the war esp. in Eastern Europe all travelling by wagon was banned since it was then law in the communist countries that everyone had to have a fixed, permanent job.
Today it is still the custom/tradition for Gypsies with motor homes to take a long summer vacation to visit “relatives” or like the Balkan and Turkish Gypsies to seek agricultural work all summer long. Romanian Roma often visit other European countries for several months to earn wages that are higher than at home. But like their ancestors they usually return home unless there is a war or continuing conflict such as in Kosovo where most of their pre-war homes (more than 17,000) were destroy and never rebuilt.
Chapter 14 THE ROPE MAKERS In an article in a Gypsy Lore journal I saw a list of 135 inherited Gypsy professions (probably more than 100 different castes). I was already familiar with most of them such as blacksmith, basket-maker, knife-sharpener, fortune teller, horse dealer, acrobat and bear leader etc, etc; and I had already found Gypsies practicing these inherited professions from India to Spain. But there was one profession I found only in southern Serbia. The rope makers.
I came across the rope makers when I was interviewing Romani survivors of WWII in Leskovac. Although most Gypsies survived WWII despite being targeted for liquidation like the Jews, there were still killing fields for Gypsies during the war and one of them was in Leskovac.
The stories we heard from survivors there were horrific. In a one hour filmed interview, Nergiza Zumberovich told us how the Germans came into her neighborhood to collect Roma. They came with the Serb police and went from house to house gathering the men and boys older than fifteen. The Germans said they were taking them to unload trucks. Nergiza said: “Our neighborhood was surrounded by Germans; they were merciless against Roma, pushing them into the trucks. Germans, Germans, there were many. They gathered up all the Romani men. Among them were my father, a sister and a brother. My sister begged my father and my brother not to get in the truck, saying that the Germans were going to execute them.27 Then the Germans pushed her in the truck too. My sister was the only woman put in the trucks.
“ All these Roma were in the prison for seven days. The prison was near the hospital. After that, they were taken away to Arapova Valley and executed. It happened about 200 meters from our Romani settlement, and all the shooting, the executing, was heard in the settlement. We heard our Roma whining, moaning at Gods’ door.
“ One Romani woman, Piska, and her daughter Hajrika, went to the place where the Roma were executed. The daughter was seventeen or eighteen years old then. When she came back home she died, and her mother died two days after that. Both died because of what they saw. That sad day more than 750 Roma from the Podvrca neighborhood were killed in Leskovac.”
But filtering through that tragic interview was the story that all the Gypsies before the war in the Leskovac neighborhood of Podvrca were traditional rope makers.
On my visits to India I had often come across the traditional Lohari blacksmiths and the Sansis basket-makers and the healers of ear aches. But I had never seen in India a rope maker. I knew from my caste books that in Old India the Kanjar had been the traditional rope makers but by the time I visited them in Rajasthan they were mainly wage laborers and rickshaw pullers. With the invention of plastic cords the tradition of making rope out of hemp had died out in India. But in Leskovac it survived until WWII when almost all the rope makers were executed by the Germans.
The art of making rope out of hemp was explained to me by an old Rom in Leskovac who had survived the Germans machine gunning down most of his male relatives. There were different kinds of Roma in Leskovac but all the rope makers lived together in the Podvrce neighborhood. They were rope makers by profession. All had inherited their profession from their ancestors. They would go to the villages and buy hemp from the peasants.
“The peasants were planting it in their fields, and we Roma were buying it from them when we had money. The gadjo grew the hemp in his field, and then he put it in the river to soak. After that he took it out of the river and carried it home to dry out. After it was dry, we went to work on it. Our whole settlement was engaged in the same job. The whole settlement was rope makers. It means that here we had no Arlija or Gurbeti Roma. Only rope makers.”
So although some ancient tr
aditions have already died out in present-day India, and the caste profession has supposedly been banned in their homeland, it was still possible to find the Kanjar profession of rope making in practice in 20th century Europe.
27- The Roma in Nish and Leskovac were not executed because they were Gypsies but because the males were rounded up as hostages for 100 of them to be killed for every German soldier that was murdered by the Partisans. Local Serbs were also rounded up in this manner; but often the Roma were denounced by the Serbs saying the Roma had contact with the Partisans, which usually was not true. In this way many more Roma were executed as hostages than the local Serbs.
Chapter 15 STEALING SPOONS When I was in Indian in 2007 with my Romani domestic partner trying to find the caste her ancestors originally came from, I met a high ranking member of the Indian parliament. I asked him when the Indian government was going to finally recognize the Gypsy Diaspora.
He said it was a touchy subject. Many Indian historians claimed the so-called Gypsies had actually been deported from time to time because of their predatory ways. How could the government now acknowledge a Diaspora that was really a deportation?
The day before, we had both attended a conference on the Indian Diaspora. The main speaker, an Indian historian, had declared that the Indian Diaspora was so great that his research showed Indians now lived in every country in the world except one. He said the only country that didn’t have Indians was Romania.
I almost chocked before I was able to stand up and correct him. “Romania has the largest population of Gypsies of any country in the world,” I declared. “Maybe today as many as 2,000,000.”
From the look on his face I could see that he did not believe that Gypsies were originally from India.
“Have you seen the DNA studies on the European Gypsies?” I asked.
He refused to answer.
When I recalled that episode the next day to this member of the Indian parliament, he just nodded his head, and said it was hard for many in India to come to terms with the fact that the supposedly most despised people in Europe had their origins in India.
“But you can’t deny their DNA,”I said, “or their traditions.”
“Their traditions,” he said. “That is the problem. They took with them their worst traditions.”
“And what are their worst traditions?” I asked.
“Stealing, of course,” he said without hesitation.
“But isn’t it a fact that at a Brahmin engagement, at most wedding engagements among the highest castes in India, it is your tradition to steal something from the bride’s home?”
“Yes!” he laughed, slapping me on the shoulder. “It is one of our oldest and best traditions.”
He then looked at me as if I had stolen a document from his safe.
“How did you know that?”
“From taking Roma in Kosovo to engagement parties in my van. On the way home they always showed me what they had stolen. Usually a spoon, nothing more. They too said it was one of their oldest traditions. An heirloom for the child of the newlyweds when he/she grew up. And then I saw in my old Indian caste books that the Brahmin also had this same tradition.”
“Ah, my God,” this Member of Parliament said. “They truly are Indians. And probably originally with high caste ancestors!”28
28 In February 2016 the Indian government held a conference about the “Roma” being part of the Indian Diaspora. To date the Indian government has still not officially recognized the “Roma” as children of India. Chapter 16 THE GOND OF CENTRAL INDIA When I was living with the Roma in Preoce, Kosovo, in 2002, an old woman asked me to please retrieve two stones from a clean mountain river so she could put them on her husband’s grave. He had recently died, and she said it was okay to beg for water on earth, but not in heaven.
I had never heard of this tradition before but duly complied. And then I went back to my old Indian caste books to see which tribe in India has this tradition. I was not surprised to find it was only a Gond tradition.
Although most gypsyologists have always considered Northwest India as the Gypsy motherland, I have found more things in common with the Gond (who migrated from south India to central India) than any other caste/tribe.29
Because the Gond speak a South Indian dialect (Tamil), it is presumed that they originated there, perhaps even in Sri Lanka. But it is well known that the Gond tribe migrated into Central India and even into Rajasthan centuries before our Gypsies left for the west.
The first indication I had that some European Gypsies might have had a connection outside of Northwest India was when I read the classic book “Black Lamb and Grey Falcon” by Rebecca West, published in 1942. In her second volume on page 26 she mentions seeing Gypsies in Skopje, Macedonia. Her professor-guide said they were called Gunpowder Gypsies because they used to find saltpeter for the Turkish Army. The professor then went on to say, “…and when Gandhi’s private secretary came here [to Skopje] he could make himself understood to our Gypsies in Tamil.”
One never knows if some Gypsy traditions were brought from Old India or picked up along the way in countries such as Afghanistan, Persia and Turkey. But the only reference I could ever find that identified the tradition of putting two stones on a grave from a clean river was the Gond of Central India.
After verifying that this was a Gond tradition, I investigated as much as I could about Gond customs and traditions. I was surprised, actually shocked, to find so many traditions that were exactly the same as most of the Romani traditions in the Balkans.
The Gond also have their sub castes which include blacksmiths (Agarias), soothsayers (Ojhas) and dancers (Koilabhutis). And in Rajasthan many castes/tribes lived in contact with the Gond such as the Lohars (the original blacksmith caste of India) and the Badi (a sister caste of the Sansis). In Rajasthan there are also the Raj-Gonds, the descendants of an alliances between Rajput adventures and Gonds.
Below are some of the Gond customs and traditions which are similar if not identical to the customs and traditions of the Balkan Roma that I have lived with:30
30
Girls are scarce and hence have to be paid for (buying the bride).31
31
If a family has given a girl to her husband’s family, they should give one back (bride exchange). 29- Recent DNA studies have revealed that the haplogroup H, which is the most common haplogroup among European Roma, is far more prevalent in central India and south India than it is in northwest India, supposedly the original homeland of all European Gypsies.
30- These Gong traditions are mentioned in H.A. Rose’s three volume classic, “A Glossary of the Tribes and Castes of Punjab and NorthWest Frontier Province,” published 1911-1919.
31 - Historically the only place in all of India where the bride price was the tradition was in the area of Multan, the ancient capital of the Punjab. Throughout the rest of India, Hindu tradition demanded that the bride’s family pay a dowry to the groom’s family.
family pay a dowry to the groom’s family.
The groom’s family must pay milk money to the bride’s family (the milk the bride’s mother gave her when nursing).
4- When a couple is very poor they may simply go and live together without any wedding and perform the ceremony afterwards when they have the means.
perform the ceremony afterwards when they have the means.
Consent of the girl is considered an essential preliminary to the union.
Consent of the girl is considered an essential preliminary to the union.
The boy must also agree to the match.
7- The most distinctive feature of the marriage is that the procession starts from the bride’s house and the wedding is held at that of the groom. This is a throwback to the days when the bride was taken by force (captured) from her own home and taken to the home of the groom.
bride was taken by force (captured) from her own home and taken to the home of the groom.
The next day the brides’ parents go to the house of
the groom to confirm she now belongs to her husband’s family.
her husband’s family.
No proper marriage rite is performed at all.
10- Bride price consists of money (or animals), clothes and jewelry.
11- The bride often resists opening her hand for the wedding ring to be put on, so the groom or his brother puts his foot on hers to force her hand open.
brother puts his foot on hers to force her hand open.
The traditional way a bride is taken to the groom’s house is by bullock (or horse) and wagon.
13- After the newlyweds retire for the night their relatives and friends shout and make merry around the house for a time, throwing all kinds of rubbish and dirt at the house.
14- In some tribes the custom of marriage by capture still survives. The prospective bridegroom collects a party of his friends and lies in wait for the girl and catches her when she is a little distance from her home.
distance from her home.
The parents usually don’t interfere since as a rule the affair is prearranged between the girl and her suitor. If she really objects, she is let go.
16- A few days before the wedding, the bride-to-be goes with one or two of her sisters or cousins to all the houses in the village, all of them crying, to receive presents from her neighbors/friends.
17- The bride is expected to cry continuously for a day and a night before the wedding to show her unwillingness to leave her family.
unwillingness to leave her family.
The bridegroom is usually picked up by the groom’s brother who pretends to carry her off by force.
19- Divorce is freely allowed on various grounds, however divorce is rare for in order to get a new wife the man would have to pay for a new bride and another wedding which few can afford.
20- A woman is regarded as impure for as long as the menstrual period lasts and during this time she cannot draw water or cook food.
Gypsy Genealogy Page 5
