A large number of Orientalist scholars have provocatively claimed that the (European) Roma community originated from India. The search for the »origin« of the Roma, based on a structural analysis of the Romani language, started as early as the eighteenth century, and the premise of the claim more often than not rests on homophony and syntax – sometimes rather flimsy – between the Romani and certain Indic languages. My project questions the structuralist premise that buttresses such claims and problematizes the methodological apparatuses deployed therein. It seeks to understand: Why are scholars and savants obsessed with »re-discovering« the »primordial« connection between »India« and the Roma? How does the narratorial articulation about the Romanies and the claim in support of their purported Indian origin forge links with the imagination of »India« Were such claims arrived at analytically, or posed in order to reinforce the Orientalist worldview?

Avishek Ray unterrichtet am National Institute of Technology in Silchar, Indien. Er arbeitet an der Schnittstelle zwischen Literatur-, Medien- und Kulturwissenschaft. Er ist Autor des Buchs The Vagabond in the South Asian Imagination: Representation, Agency & Resilience (2021, Routledge) und Mitherausgeber des Sammelbands Nation, Nationalism and the Public Sphere: Religious Politics in India (SAGE, 2020).