Between Spaces: The Originary Myth of the Romani and India(n-ness)

Trans-border movement -- of both people and artefacts -- has become a part of ‘modern’ state-system, whilst ‘deterritorialization’ (Appadurai, 1990) characterizes the contemporary globalised world. Thinking in these terms, the states produce borders as much as borders (re)configure the states in terms of territoriality. This paper argues that the claim in support of the Romani community’s Indian origin -- in most instances, premised upon the homophony between Romani and Indian languages -- is synthetically a priorized in commensuration with notions of ‘border thinking’ so pervasive within the the Orientalist discourse; and has provoked classist confrontations and ideological practices of territorializing ‘differential space’ (Lefebvre, 1992). It seeks to understand: why and how did the originary myth of the Romani travel across borders? Why despite an arguable methodology this claim was widely accepted? Why are linguists and scholars since the eighteenth century obsessed with ‘re-discovering’ the ‘primordial’ connection between ‘India’ and the ethos of wandering? Using two texts – Rahul Sankrityayan’s Ghumakkar Shastra (Treatise on Vagabonds; Hindi; 1948) and Sripantha’s Gypsir Paye Paye (In the Footprints of Gypsies; Bangla; 1994) – as case studies, this paper illustrates how the implicit ‘Indic’ revivalism gives rise to, as Edward Said (2000) insists, a diverse range of discursive meanings, contingency and implications, when it travels and is adapted across borders; and how the vernacular iterations inherit the Orientalist claim, wherein the thematic trope of (national) ‘origin’ functions as a leverage to mount nationalist ethos.