Why did the Romani leave India and travel to Europe? Was it a slow or quick process? If it was a slow process, why didn't they leave Romani groups behind in Iran, Iraq, Syria, Turkey, etc?

Before we begin, a clarification of terminology is in order. The Romani call themselves the “Romani”. The common English word, however—especially in America—is “Gypsy”. The word “Gypsy” is in fact a corruption of the Renaissance English word ‘gypcian, which means “Egyptian”, because some mistakenly believed that the Romani came from Egypt.^(1, 2) “Gypsy” isn’t even the only exonym applied to the Romani—other exonyms include “Kaale”, “Manouche”, “Romanichal”, “Tattare”, “Gitano”, “Bashalde”, and “Sinti.”^(3, 4) European nations applied some of these exonyms not to Romani-speaking communities per se, but rather to the descendants of Romani-speaking communities who were forced to give up their language due to historical circumstances, and therefore adopted the languages of their adoptive homelands. These people, however, found it impossible to also give up their semi-nomadic lifestyle, partially due to the marginalization they experienced and continue to experience in Europe; they therefore came to be known as “Travellers.”^(5) For the sake of simplicity, however, both the people and their language shall heretofore be referred to as “Romani”.

Indian Origins

The ancestors of the Romani people left Northern India over one thousand years ago—possibly as far back as fifteen hundred years ago.^(6, 7) Researchers can reliably trace their Indian descent not only through genetic testing^(8), but also through linguistics.

How do linguists know that the Romani came specifically from India? Romani is an Indo-Aryan language.^(9) This means that Romani and Hindi—along with myriad other languages, including both Sindhi and Sinhalese—all have a common ancestor, i.e. a language that was spoken before it evolved into Hindi, Romani, Sindhi, Sinhalese, and so on (compare how both English and German have a common ancestor, and how both are now separate, mutually unintelligible languages). Given their common descent, it can be inferred that Romani and Hindi were at one time both spoken in roughly the same geographic area, i.e. Northern India.

Given the widespread dispersal of the Romani people, the Romani language unsurprisingly has many dialectical differences. Whether or not these dialectical differences are sufficient to constitute several distinct Romani languages is a controversial question, specifically because the border between “dialect” and “language” has always been incredibly fuzzy.^(10) Many of the languages spoken by Travellers are admixtures of their adopted languages and extensive Romani-language lexica. These languages are therefore categorized as “Para-Romani.”^(11) The diasporic Jewish languages are a useful analogue to these Para-Romani languages. Languages like Yiddish (i.e. Judeo-German), Ladino (Judeo-Spanish), Judeo-Arabic, and Judeo-Malayalam—among many other languages—are all distinctly Jewish dialects of various national languages. As such, they retain extensive in-group lexica, which in many cases are derived mostly from Hebrew. The Para-Romani languages follow a similar pattern.

Why did the Romani leave India? No one is able to answer this question with any degree of certainty. Some researchers have argued that the Romani first formed as a military collective opposed to the Islamic invasions of India.^(12) Other researchers argue that the bulk of the Romani constituted “migrants who appear to have been members of service-providing castes”.^(13) More recent research—such as that proposed by Lev Tcherenkov and Stephane Laederich—suggests that the Romani are descended from the Indian Dom, a group of “musicians, dancers, smiths, basket weavers, sieve makers, [and] woodworkers” who either originated as members of one caste or as members of several.^(14) A synthesis of such findings can be found in the work of Józef Vekerdi, who asserts the following:

The Gypsies’ ancestors began leaving northwest India probably about the seventh century AD. They are characterized as robbers, murderers, hangmen and entertainers. These professions were prescribed for them by the rules of the Hindu caste system. Thus they belonged to the so-called ‘wandering criminal tribes’ of India and were obliged to lead a parasitic way of life. Among the numerous outcast groups, they occupied the lowest rung on the social scale.^(15)

In any case, it seems that the ancestors of the Romani constituted a composite population defined occupationally rather than ethnically, and may have therefore initially included several different Indian ethnicities. This composite population migrated westward from Northern India in several waves comprising three main groups—the Romani, Domari, and Lomavren—before settling and shortly thereafter dispersing within the Byzantine Empire, where their language differentiated them from other peoples. This linguistic differentiation forced these diverse Indian peoples to coalesce, thereby solidifying themselves as an ethnicity separate from others that existed in their adoptive homelands. The initial migration process may have taken as long as two centuries, so it may definitely be characterized as a “slow” process.^(16)

If it was a slow process, why didn’t they leave Romani groups behind in Iran, Iraq, Syria, Turkey, etc?

They did. In fact, to this day there are substantial Romani, Domari, and Lomavren populations in all of these countries, especially in Turkey and Egypt.^(17) A veritable constellation of terms for both the Romani and Domari arose in the Levant and Egypt, where they were known as “Nawar”, “Ghajar”, “Ghorbat”, “Jat”, “Halab”, and “Qurbat”. Like in Europe, Middle Easterners perceived them as “itinerants, beggars, and thieves, who sometimes play musical instruments, their women thought to be prostitutes and fortunetellers.”^(18) Given the similar stereotypes and resultant antiziganism, Middle Eastern Romani and Domari communities face many of the same challenges as their European counterparts.^(19)

P.S. There’s a good question in this thread posited by u/ntbananas:

Additionally, what changed upon arrival in Europe to cause the Romani to splinter into different sub-groups

The answer is chiefly geographic dispersion. The Romani are known for their semi-nomadic lifestyle, so they have over the years dispersed all across the continent. Today, the approximately ten million Romani who live in Europe are scattered all the way from Spain to Russia, and form substantial minorities in several Central and Eastern European countries, particularly Romania.^(20) Given their geographic remoteness from each other, the European Romani and Traveller populations have naturally broken up into numerous subgroups.

P.P.S. While there certainly might be some truth to the above quote by Vekerdi, I am personally tempted to think that the work from which this passage was taken may be tainted with some toxic bias. The title of Vekerdi’s work—“The Gypsies and the Gypsy Problem in Hungary”—casually mentions a “Gypsy Problem.” Moreover, Vekerdi himself was born in Hungary, a country that historically had a large Romani population and concomitantly developed widespread antiziganism, a sentiment which the tone of the above passage does nothing to distance itself from. I’ve nevertheless included Vekerdi’s text given my suspicion is thus far unconfirmed, and because he was a researcher and published this work in an academic journal, which is (ideally) supposed to be an arbiter of scholarly discourse. If anything, my suspicion only goes to show how important it is to critically engage with source material.

(Continued below)