Insiders, Outsiders and Others extract

Taken from Chapter 1 'Gypsies and Identity'

The Gypsy diaspora, Gypsies in Europe and the United Kingdom

There is no accurate account of how Gypsies came to exist as a largely nomadic group within Europe, partly because different groups of Gypsies share different histories and partly because there are few accurate records of the foundational account of the Gypsy diaspora, described below (Acton 1974; Kenrick and Puxon 1972; Okely 1983). The most generally accepted accounts suggests that Gypsies originated in northern India and moved west across the Middle East and Europe 1,000 to 1,500 years ago, possibly in response to incursions by Islam and the threats of war. There is no definitive link between Gypsies in Europe and a specific nomadic or sedentary group in India; however, linguistic studies have established a great deal of commonality between Romany and Hindi and Punjabi (Fraser 1992). Kenrick and Puxon (1972), amongst others, have noted the similarity between the Hindi Dom, describing nomadic Indian groups, and the word Rom, used by Gypsies to describe themselves. The main criticism of this foundational theory was articulated by the anthropologist Judith Okely (1983; 1997), who suggests that the linguistic theory is overstated. She argues (1983) that there is a racial group who are defined as Gypsies, whose origins are based on linguistic and cultural traits derived from India; however, she suggests that European Gypsies also originate and develop from numerous different and often indigenous groups. She further suggests (1983) a twofold tendency by gaujo academics on the one hand and Gypsy politicians on the other to overstate the Indian connection. The academics, she suggests, are over-enamoured by the exotic nature of the connection, and Gypsy politicians have often found it expedient to suggest that Gypsies share a specific ethnicity, something that becomes more readily accepted by the establishment of a direct link to a particular place. Whilst Okely’s dismissal of the Indian connection flies in the face of much established research, she rightly demonstrates the importance of other indigenous communities and cross-fertilisation of cultures in the make-up of contemporary Gypsy cultures. Most importantly, Okely stresses the need to engage with contemporary identities of Gypsies rather than with an exotic mythical group who may or may not represent an accurate historical reality.

The debate around Gypsy identity is confusing in many respects because of the understandings that are generated by academic interest in the area. The connections to India might well exist and be understood in terms of both relatively objective evidential accounts and more subjective attempts at providing reasonable accounts of where Gypsies originated. However, as Okely argues, this may not relate to the direct experiences of Gypsies themselves, for whom the place of origin may not be so important. Such a relationship to place of origin, however, flies in the face of much academic writing about identity. So, for example, Stuart Hall’s (1990) description of a twofold construction of cultural identity, which emphasises on the one hand ‘belonging’ and on the other ‘becoming’, does not fit the Gypsy experience in the neat manner in which a reading of the diaspora of African people might be explained within academic discourse. In particular, the sense of ‘belonging’ and of sharing a ‘oneness’ with a single group who left India 1,000 or more years ago does not ring true, certainly not in the sense of being informed by an association to that place or those people. It is also a sense of ‘belonging’ that does not feed into wider, more popular, understandings of Gypsy culture.

Hall’s analysis, based on the experiences of the African diaspora, suggests an enormous and politically conscious body upon which an individual black person can call as political capital; and, more importantly, this allegiance is recognised within wider cultures (even in places where it is actively disliked there is still a recognition of the history and linkages of the African diaspora). Such a unified understanding is not part and parcel of how Gypsies are viewed and one consequence is a weakening of their political strength; the individual Gypsy cannot summon up within popular understandings a similar constituency with a shared and understood heritage. Hall’s parallel process of becoming sits more comfortably with Gypsy experience, recognising as it does that one result of diaspora is that amongst groups of people there are ‘critical points of deep and significant difference which constitute ‘what we really are’; or rather – since history has intervened – “what we have become”’ (Hall 1990, 225). This sense of cultural identity, which in Hall’s description is one that is shaped potently by the effects of diaspora, ‘is a matter of “becoming”, as well as of “being”’ (Hall 1990, 225). It places the idea of cultural identity within a narrative framework; it senses how an individual’s own history has a shaping effect on identity. For Hall, ‘belonging’ and ‘becoming’ work in tandem, although inevitably providing grounds for ambiguity and complexity in understandings of who we are. At the end of the day both aspects rely on the sense of belonging to establish a solid foundation, to anchor the individual to his identity. If this is not a neat fit with Gypsy experience, and there is no innate sense of belonging to a single diasporic people, then there is a need to explore how Gypsies remain classed in many ways as a single group of people.