Romani people in Romania


Romani people constitute one of Romania's largest minorities. According to the 2011 census, their number was 621,000 people or 3.3% of the total population, being the second-largest ethnic minority in Romania after Hungarians. There are different estimates about the size of the total population of people with Romani ancestry in Romania, varying from 4.6 percent to over 10 percent of the population, because many people of Romani descent do not declare themselves Roma.

Origins

The Romani people originate from northern India, presumably from the northwestern Indian regions such as Rajasthan and Punjab.
The linguistic evidence has indisputably shown that roots of Romani language lie in India: the language has grammatical characteristics of Indian languages and shares with them a big part of the basic lexicon, for example, body parts or daily routines. More exactly, Romani shares the basic lexicon with Hindi and Punjabi. It shares many phonetic features with Marwari, while its grammar is closest to Bengali.
Genetic findings in 2012 suggest the Romani originated in northwestern India and migrated as a group. According to a genetic study in 2012, the ancestors of present scheduled tribes and scheduled caste populations of northern India, traditionally referred to collectively as the Ḍoma, are the likely ancestral populations of modern European Roma.
In February 2016, during the International Roma Conference, the Indian Minister of External Affairs stated that the people of the Roma community were children of India. The conference ended with a recommendation to the Government of India to recognize the Roma community spread across 30 countries as a part of the Indian diaspora.

Terminology

In Romani, the native language of the Romani, the word for people is pronounced or depending on dialect. Starting from the 1990s, the word has also been officially used in the Romanian language, although it has been used by Romani activists in Romania as far back as 1933.
There are two spellings of the word in Romanian: rom, and rrom. The first spelling is preferred by the majority of Romani NGOs and it is the only spelling accepted in Romanian Academy's Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române. The two forms reflect the fact that for some speakers of Romani there are two rhotic phonemes: and. In the government-sponsored writing system is spelt rr. The final i in rromi is the Romanian plural.
The traditional and colloquial Romanian name for Romani, is "țigani", French tsiganes, Portuguese ciganos, Dutch zigeuner, German Zigeuner, Turkish Çigan, Persian زرگری, Arabic غجري, Italian zingari, Russian цыганский and Kazakh Сыған/ســىــعــان Depending on context, the term may be considered to be pejorative in Romania.
In 2009–2010, a media campaign followed by a parliamentary initiative asked the Romanian Parliament to accept a proposal to revert the official name of country's Roma to Țigan, the traditional and colloquial Romanian name for Romani, in order to avoid the possible confusion among the international community between the words Roma — which refers to the Romani ethnic minority — and Romania. The Romanian government supported the move on the grounds that many countries in the European Union use a variation of the word Țigan to refer to their Gypsy populations. The Romanian upper house, Senate, rejected the proposal.

History and integration

In combination with the Mongol invasion of Europe the first Romani had reached the territory of present-day Romania around the year 1241.
At the beginning of the 14th century, when the Mongols withdrew from Eastern Europe, the Romani who were left were taken as prisoners and slaves. According to documents signed by Prince Dan I the first captured Romani in Wallachia dates back to year 1385.
In fact, the Romani people, and the Romani language, have their origin in northern India. The presence of the Roms within the territory of present-day Romania dates back to the 14th century. The population of Roms fluctuated depending on diverse historical and political events.

Before 1856

Until their liberation on February 20, 1856, most Roms lived in slavery. They could not leave the property of their owners. Around the year 1850, about 102,000 Romani lived in the Danubian Principalities, comprising 2.7% of the population.

Between 1856 and 1918

After their liberation in 1856, a significant number of Roms left Wallachia and Moldavia.
In 1886 the number of Roms was estimated at around 200,000, or 3.2% of Romania's population. The 1899 census counted around 210,806 "others", of whom roughly half were Romani.
In Bessarabia, annexed by the Russian Empire in 1812, the Roms were liberated in 1861. Many of them migrated to other regions of the Empire, while important communities remained in Soroca, Otaci and the surroundings of Cetatea Albă, Chișinău, and Bălți.

Between 1918 and 1945

The 1918 union with Transylvania, Banat, Bukovina and Bessarabia increased the number of ethnic Romani in Romania.
The first census in interwar Romania took place in 1930; 242,656 persons were registered as Gypsies .
The territory lost in 1940 caused a drop in the number of Romani, leaving a high number especially in Southern Dobruja and Northern Transylvania.
During the Second World War, the Fascist regime of Ion Antonescu deported 25,000 Romani to Transnistria; of these, 11,000 died. In all, from the territory of present-day Romania, 36,000 Romani perished during that time.

During the communist regime and after 1989

The communist authorities have tried to integrate the Roma community, for example by building flats for them. Apart from the 1977 national campaign that confiscated all the gold belonging to the Roma, there are few documents about the particular situation of this ethnic group during Ceaușescu's dictatorship.
Sometimes the authorities tried to cover up crimes related to racial hatred, so as not to raise the social tension. An example of this is the crime committed by a truck driver named Eugen Grigore, from Iași who, in 1974, to avenge the death of his wife and his three children caused by a group of Roma, drove his truck into a Roma camp, killing 24 people. This fact was made public only in the 2000s.
After the fall of communism in Romania, there were many inter-ethnic conflicts targeting the Roma community, the most famous being the Hădăreni riots. Other important clashes against Roma happened, from 1989 to 2011, in Turulung, Vârghiș, Bolintin-Deal, Ogrezeni, Reghin, Cărpiniş, Găiseni, Plăieşii de Sus, Vălenii Lăpuşului, Racşa, Valea Largă, Apata, Sânmartin

Religion

According to the 2002 census, 81.9% of Roma are Orthodox Christians, 6.4% Pentecostals, 3.8% Roman Catholics, 3% Reformed, 1.1% Greek Catholics, 0.9% Baptists, 0.8% Seventh-Day Adventists, while the rest belong to other religions such as.

Cultural influence

Notable Romanian Romani musicians and bands include Grigoraş Dinicu, Johnny Răducanu, Ion Voicu, Taraf de Haïdouks and Connect-R.
The musical genre manele, a part of Romanian pop culture, is often sung by Romani singers in Romania and has been influenced in part by Romani music, but mostly by Oriental music brought in Romania from Turkey during the 19th century. Romanian public opinion about the subject varies from support to outright condemnation.

Self-proclaimed "Romani royalty"

The Romani community has:

Notable people