I would like to present here some thoughts about the fundamentals of the Romani identity and also about the group identity, in general. I begin with an inquiry about what happened with our ancestors when they left the Indian Subcontinent (since a closer look on the Romanipen and on the contemporary knowledge about the Desi of those times shows that something happened in that moment). The Dharmic-specific relative purity rules, dealing with the relations between castes, stepped back or were temporarily replaced (if our ancestors came from more local castes) by a set of absolute purity rules regarding the correct behavior of the Romani people and their relation with the others. Later, when the Romani population grew in number in certain regions, the relative purity rules reappeared (confined only among Roma) as a result of the emergence of the Romani castes. They started to be used together with the absolute purity rules. The latter define what is Romani and what is not Romani, presenting the identity as something global, while the former define the role of a Romani group as a specialized part of a complex society. The latter define who are the Roma, while the former define what do groups of Roma, what is special about them.

The data gathered until now about the early history of the Romani people point to one or more South Asian groups that coalesced in Eastern Anatolia in the centuries 11^th-13^th, evolving into a new Romani identity. The Mongol invasions of the 13^th century determined most of the Roma to emigrate towards Europe. By the 14^th century they began to be mentioned frequently in the Balkans and in the 15^th century some branches emigrated further in Western Europe. However, those from the West remained a small part of the local population, except the Iberian Peninsula, until new Romani migrations from the East occurred in the 19^th-21^st centuries. Another distinctive feature was the refusal of the Western political structures to recognize them as citizens of the local states, an attitude prevalent over some centuries, until the Age of Enlightenment. In practice, this meant a violent history of violence aiming at the extermination of the local Roma. On the other hand, the conquest of the Southeastern Europe undertook by the Ottoman Empire, in the 14th-15th centuries, gave to the Roma an official status, since this state was conceived as a multireligious one. While there is not much information about the situation of the local Roma before, in the year 1475, the Ottoman Empire recognizes them as tax-paying citizens.