THE ABSURDITY OF IGNORANCE

I would like to present to your attention a broad prevailing opinion, which speaks of the total lack of enlightenment of many people, concerning defining the Roma ethnicity. I hope this brief review throws some light upon the matter. Here is a citation, that expresses this opinion:

“The Roma people are in fact Gypsies; you should not therefore use the name ‘Roma’, which comes from ‘Rome’. What is there in common between her great Roman civilisation and the Gypsies..."

Now this is called a classic ignorance. The word ‘Roma’ does not have anything to do with the Roman empire. It originates from the word ‘Paroma’ – the name of an ancient caste in India. That caste (A strata of society), has done music and all its derivatives - dances, poetry, spectacles for the court, etc. (See: Roma Identity Crisis). When the different muslim empires (Ghaznadian, Rum-Seldchuk, Mogul, Ottoman - See: History of the Roma) start raiding the kingdoms of ancient India, the Roma were expelled from their home land.

The word ‘Gypsies’ on the other hand, comes from Greek, and means a dualist. The Roma people themselves have partially accepted it, but this has been only under the social pressure and without accurately understanding what it actually means.

The word ‘Gypsy’ has always been used with a negative connotation, including by Nazi Germany as well, which sent a huge number of Roma in the camps of death, together with Jews, Ploitical enemies and the rest of ‘Non-aryans’. This negative connotation is particularly striking in Bulgarian, where its derivatives are a regular synonym of a most base abuse and are an expression of pure racism. Therefore, its use for naming the Roma people is totally unacceptable.

Roma people who respect themselves would never call hemselves ‘Gypsies’, as the Bulgarians who respect themselves would not call themselves giaours. And as the word ‘Giaour’ has been violently enforced by the Ottoman empire, to identify an entire ethnicity – the Bulgarian one, the word ‘Gypsies’ has also been used to identify the Roma people, from purely racist motives and prejudices, or in the best case - due to ignorance. Let us not be racists though, and people that try to take God’s place by putting labels upon the God made ethnicities, especially with a spirit of pride, superiority and contempt, for we are all equal in God’s eyes.

Nikola Dimitrov
Assistant editor-in-chief