WHY TODAY Since 1990, International Roma Day has been observed on April 8 to commemorate the First Romani Congress on this day in 1971. The day aims to spread awareness about the Romani people (or the Roma) and their culture. WHO ARE THE ROMA? The Roma refers to a wide grouping of ethnic communities such as the Sinti, the Manouche, the Romiche and the Kale. According to a 2018 European Parliamentary Research Service report, they are located worldwide and number 10-12 million people. Of these, about 6 million were located in the European Union, forming 9.9% of the population in Bulgaria, 9% in Slovakia, 8.6% in Romania, 0.2% in Italy and 0.1% in Germany. They were effectively the largest ethnic minority on the continent in 2018. WHY A DAY FOR THE ROMA? The Romani have been historically persecuted. They were erroneously called 'gypsy' in English as they were deemed to have Egyptian descent, and over the years, the term has been seen as a pejorative. An enduring and denigrating stereotype of the Roma people has been that of lazy, criminal, nomadic people who dabbled in the occult and kidnapped children. The worst of these offences occurring under Nazi rule as thousands of Roma were sent to concentration camps and murdered. They were ranked at the bottom of the Nazi racial hierarchy, along with the Jews and black people. The 1935 German Nuremberg Laws, which disenfranchised Jews, were extended to the Roma. To this day, their mainstream representation has centred on a set of negative stereotypes. Despite their significant presence in Europe, they experience high levels of poverty and unemployment and often lack access to education. The 2025 statement by the European Council commemorating this day noted that the “Roma youth remain underrepresented in policymaking and disproportionately affected by widespread and persisting antigypsyism, and still face disproportionate barriers to education, employment, healthcare, and public life.” The statement affirmed the council’s commitment to seek actionable political and institutional change. HOW ARE THEY CONNECTED TO INDIA? A 2012 study published in Nature established that all the Romani people had descended from “a single population that left India some 1,500 years ago and dispersed across Europe through the Balkans.” According to genetic analysis in the study, Romani ancestors mingled with local populations while heading to the Balkans, before settling down across Europe. (Mendizabal et al., Reconstructing the Population History of European Romani from Genome-wide Data, Current Biology, 2012) A 2012 study by researchers at the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB) concluded that the European Romani had likely descended from the Scheduled Tribes and Scheduled Caste communities in Northwest India. By analysing genetic data, the researchers established that the Roma were closely connected to the presumed aboriginal Doma community in northwestern India and the Gangetic plain, and likely shared the same ancestors. (Rai, Niraj, et al, “The phylogeography of Y-chromosome haplogroup H1a1a-M82 reveals the likely Indian origin of the European Romani populations,” PloS one 7.11, 2012) FAMOUS ROMANI PEOPLE or REPRESENTATION Charlie Chaplin, Michael Caine, and Rita Hayworth are famous Hollywood celebrities who claim descent from the Roma. Representation of the Roma in mainstream comics include the superpowered mutant Magneto, and twins Wanda and Pietro or Peter Maximoff (Marvel comics), as well as Dick Grayson, the first Robin in the Batman and Robin pairing (DC Comics).
