India

   It would take a volume on its own to look at tribes and castes in India and Pakistan who might be related to the Romanies of Europe and the Doma (Nawwar) of the Middle East. We would need to consider all the groups of industrial nomads who speak a North Indian language. However, there are three names that spring to mind because of links that have already been made. The first is the Ban-jara, who took an active part in the second World Romany Congress in Geneva. Dr. Shyamala Devi, who later was to be one of the first of the clan to go through university, has visited Europe many times and written about the Banjara-Romany connection. Roma writers from Europe were invited to participate in the second Writers Festival in 2006 and a special session was arranged for them.

   The Sapera (snake charmers), also known as Kalbelia, live mainly in Rajasthan. Sapera dancers have visited Europe several times and are featured in Tony Gatlif's film Latcho drom. English Gypsies were invited by the Indian High Commission to a showing of a documentary on this tribe in 1984. The Romany viewers immediately claimed to recognize the whistles used to call dogs - which had survived in their folk memory for nearly a millennium since the departure from northern India. The Kalbelia themselves are not as politically organized as are the Banjara.

   It has been suggested that-at the same time the ancestors of the European Gypsies moved west-a small group of nomads, the Vaghri or Nari-kuravar, migrated south. They speak a North Indian language and their main occupation today is catching birds-nari-kuravar in Tamil. The Vaghri-like the Kalbelia-have not reached the political maturity of the Banjara and links between them and European Romanies have been solely through the missionaries of the Pentecostalism movement.

   See also Indian Origin.