File spoon-archives/postcolonial.archive/postcolonial_1998/postcolonial.9812, message 169


Date: Tue, 22 Dec 1998 23:37:05 +0500 (GMT+0500)
From: PROF DR B R SHYAMALA DEVI RATHORE <brsdevi-AT-hd1.vsnl.net.in>
Subject: [Romnet] Review of Professor Devi's Documentary Film on Ghor and Roma (fwd)




---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Mon, 21 Dec 1998 23:41:43 -0000
From: "Trehan,N" <N.Trehan-AT-lse.ac.uk>
Reply-To: romnet-l-AT-smtp.teleport.com
To: "'romnet-l-AT-teleport.com'" <romnet-l-AT-teleport.com>
Subject: [Romnet] Review of Professor Devi's Documentary Film on Ghor and Roma


New Documentary Film on Roma and Ghor, =93We Are Everywhere=94, by Professor
Shymala Devi Rathore, economist, Kakatiya University, Andhra Pradesh, India

=93SKINHEADS=94 and =93MULTINATIONAL CORPORATIONS=94 are two words you will not hear
used in this new documentary film.  This is because these words (and
concepts) were carefully censored from the film=92s text by the visual
anthropologist who assisted Professor Shymala Devi Rathore with her film.
The 33 minutes of at times amateur footage (Professor Devi readily concedes
that she is not a professional film-maker) compiled in both India and Europe
testify to her perseverance to see the production of the film to fruition,
despite the opposition she has had to =93get her message across=94. And her
provocative message is loud and clear, Roma and Ghor (also known as Banjaras
or Lambadas in India) are =93One People=94, part of the same diaspora of Indic
peoples who share a common cultural heritage, and who today, occupy similar
socio-economic positions within diverse societies.

Throughout her travels in Western Europe, in Belgium, France, Germany,
Spain, the Netherlands, and the U.K., she visited numerous Romani
communities and activists and became convinced through linguistic and
cultural similarities that the Roma/Sinti of Europe share a common ancestry
with her people in India. She posits something like this: if we subscribe to
the Muslim invasion-dispersion theory of Romani migration westward, then
surely, not all of the ancestors of the Roma went westward. In other words,
there must have been a southward and eastward migration as well. Professor
Devi asserts that her people, the Ghor in South India (who incidentally
speak a North Indian language called =91Ghorboli=92) are related to the Romani
diaspora.  She estimates that the total population of Roma/Ghor worldwide is
approximately 40 million, and that, her people who are living all over
India, make up about half that figure.

The film begins with India, where Professor Devi has taken footage of the
way that most Ghor make their living: either through physical labour in the
agricultural or construction industries or through hawking, artisanry, petty
trading, and rickshaw-driving in larger towns and cities. The emphasis on
the economic contributions of Indian Ghor is one of the shining strengths of
the film. One scene, in particular, where she discusses the price of bangles
made by the Ghor with a Dutch shopkeeper in Amsterdam sends a disturbing
message: the price mark-up is over 20-fold.  The same theme of economic
exploitation is repeated earlier when she highlights the plight of Ghor
labourers who become trapped into poverty through the loan-debt cycle in the
agricultural sector.

As an Indian-born researcher, perhaps the most powerful revelation for me
was to realize that Hinduism, at least to some Ghor, is an alien religion,
and those practicing it are generally represented by the land-owning classes
comprising the non-Ghor, who are seen as the =91oppressors=92. One poignant
scene at a Holocaust Memorial ceremony at the site of the former Westerbroek
camp in the Netherlands is linked to the Telangana Arms Struggle in Andhra
Pradesh in the 1940s under the Nizam (Muslim) regime, where many Ghor were
burned alive in hay bundles which were set on fire by the land-owning
classes.

In another scene, during the marriage of a young Ghor woman, the narrator
reveals that the wedding is in the Hindu tradition and that this Ghor family
has assimilated Hindu practices. The implication is that once you peel off
the layer of Hindu practices, you will uncover those of the Ghor. Which
brings me to the most important contribution of this film: to emphasize the
dearth of academic research (linguistic, cultural, economic, historical) to
either support or disprove Professor Devi=92s hypothesis. Much, much more
research needs to be done to divine the links between the two groups, and I
hope her film will spark some action in this direction. Like Professor Ian
Hancock and other Romani intellectuals who are calling for a recognition of
Romani history, I think it is time that serious research is undertaken in
India itself, by both Indian and Romani scholars.

=93We Are Everywhere=94 has two distinct sets of target audiences: governments,
policy makers, social workers, and NGOs making up the first set, and Roma
and Ghor making up the second. The ultimate message for her non-Gypsy target
audience is to emphasize the socio-economic discrimination that Roma/Ghor
face in Europe as well as in India, while for the Roma/Ghor audience she
hopes that they will =93recognise their relatives in far-off lands=94 and seek
to create a community consciousness in order to work together to overcome
oppression.

As a young girl in post-colonial India, Professor Devi attended a missionary
school similar to the one depicted in her film. Admitted to Osmania
University in Andhra Pradesh, she then went on to one of India=92s most
prestigious universities, Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) in New Delhi to
become a development economist. As Bubbles Brazil, a British Gypsy from
Abbeywoods site in England says in the film, =93She=92s a Gypsy, you know, she=92s
one of us...no matter what country you come from, we=92re one race of people=94.

---Nidhi Trehan, December 1998

To obtain a copy of the video, please contact Professor Devi directly.

Cheers to all for a great holiday season!!!!!


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