Generally speaking, the identity of a group of people (ethnic, religious or other) is an issue that gained tremendous importance according as the modern evolutions in communication and mass education broke the isolation of every local culture. Their specific worldviews, previously assumed as obvious and normal by their followers, increasingly, for some centuries, get relativizing each other and also find themselves put under pressure by the fast evolution of the ways of life. This put an end to the unquestionable identification with the cultural items and habits that made the social fabric of a specific group of people. Usually, the answer to this social uncertainty was to struggle for the preservation of the earlier status, to patch up every gap in the public conscience produced by the modern process described above.

Thus the question of modernity, about who we really are, determined the habit of creating a self-image out of every fact perceived as a possession of a group: this is our way of dressing, this is our way of speaking, they are the personalities that serve as role models, this is our land, this is our history, this is our..., this is our..., the sum of these enclosures being considered as the definition of a specific group. A further codification and publicization made sure that this concept gain acknowledgement among both insiders and outsiders.

One of the consequences of this social rearrangement was the shift occurred in politics towards the ethnic/religious/other social groups of people. They became the new major political players, a shift that affected their internal structure, since their initial meaning stepped down on a secondary role. They became firstly means for political rally and secondly means for socialization of the individuals (the initial role). This contributed further to the will to codify and empower the various identities, since people belonging to groups slow to assert their identity to the rest of the world, in this specific way, too often found themselves ousted of the political game and disfranchised. Usually, it is not noticed how the external details employed by the modern ideology of nationalism are diverted from their initial roles, towards recreating a legitimacy lost in the process of modernization. As a result of this process, what previously was "undisputedly, unquestionably mine", now it is "mine but not yours". This is a real change, created for preserving an imaginary unchanged identity.

The semi-conscious creation patches the tears, the gaps, oblivious of the fact that the very patching estranges the individual/group from the past, that in this manner it appears a new textile material. This is not the initial fabric, it does not have that texture in which the threads are related to each other at the micro level, in a functional manner, throughout the fabric. They are just (many times) ill-assorted patches that are related to each other only by the sewing made by the minds of the people who created the new identity. Thus, the new fabric is obviously not functional. This is not a problem for the creators, since it was not made for contemporary socialization. In fact, it has no other contemporary use other than a museum item created to provide legitimacy in the modern world. They use other fabric to cover themselves and to socialize, a modern fabric continuously changing and unable to provide legitimacy because of the current static outlook of the persons using it. They do not see that those differences they collect do not relate them to their real identity, just put them, together with the other people believing in nationalism, in a modern caste system. They say they have different identities. They may have, who knows, but those presented by them are just a collection of differences that shows paradoxically what they have in common, their common outlook.

The Romani people did not become involved in this modern caste system. As it is usual in the Romani culture, regarding the ideologies, it did not appear an express prohibition. Individuals imagined and experimented a Romani nationalism, but nothing happened at a popular level. The old principle of holding firm to the real identity, by denying its relation to anything that attempts to resemble it, known in Sanskrit as neti neti ("neither nor") helped us not to follow this misleading ideology. In the meantime, it began a modern codification of what means Romani people, mostly made by non-Roma (for patching this gap in their modern outlook) and without effects among the people. However, this lack of a Romani nationalist self-assertion meant an exclusion from the organization of the modern world (which, beyond the appearances, is mostly based on group rights, rather than individual rights). The absence of the Romani people as a political player made possible an officialization of the centuries-old discrimination and Gypsification (by denying the existence of the Romanipen), a genuine social prison that affects our daily life. Related to this is the non-involvement in politics, in areas where the Romani people are an important share in the local population and could have a political voice by expressing the right to vote. Also the identification as Romani tends to be much lower when official censuses occur. This does not mean that those who declare other ethnicity are necessarily assimilated. Rather, in the context of lacking a genuine official expression of the Romani identity, specifically for self-identification in the contemporary context among non-Roma and facing the pressure of discrimination, if possible, it may be declared other ethnicity without any consequences on the personal identity.

Probably the most important thing that happened in the modern history regarding the Romani identity is the discovery of our origin and of the fact that there exist many other contemporary people who share the same fundamentals of our identity. This is an important breakthrough for those who found it, it shows that we are not abnormal, our worldview, while appearing strange because of our minority status and further distorted and hindered by the Gypsification, in fact it is a normal one when lived by a local majority.

However, until now, this discovery did not produce notable results, here too nothing happened at the popular level. A closer look explains this by remembering that a name not always points to the reality it is supposed to describe, especially in this context. For most of the Roma the name India had nothing in common with what is really happening in South Asia, but with the exotic India from the minds of the local non-Romani majority, the overwhelming source of information of this kind. This exotic India, has no correspondent in reality, it is a distortion made by local non-Roma and belonging to the Western culture. The same as the Gypsy in the Romani case, it is a caricature of the Desis, a mental assimilation of them into the Western outlook. Thus, this offers nothing interesting from the point of view of the Romani culture, it is a dead end. While there was no alternative source of information stemming directly from South Asia, the only possibilities to begin something were the direct contacts.

Another factor that hiders the communication with other Desis is the assimilationist pressure from the local non-Roma to identify with their culture (pressure that vary from country to country). This insistence aims also at the fragmentation of the Romani people, at pitting against each other Romanies from different states. In the last years, there appeared some voices among local non-Roma (not necessarily determined by empathy or respect for us), calling the attention to the fact that this approach is a deadlock, the Roma will never fully assimilate in the local culture and expressing the hope that a social integration by considering the Romani culture would improve the social relations.

Further, there is the intervention of some missionaries from some neo-Protestant cults (also of the Roma who identify with them) to discourage any possible contacts of this kind, hoping for easier conversions. They use to present purposely some features of the exotic India (like Kama Sutra and others) in order to induce the belief that the Indians are polluted, they do not respect purity rules. Of course, the truth is that we share the same fundamentals of purity rules and taboos, that those Indians are just imaginary Western characters and in future hopefully this will come to light. Moreover, this missionary lobby and also some overenthusiastic Jews, each hoping for conversions in their own group, present the Roma as being Semites, not Indo-Aryans. They concoct so-called differences to "prove" that the Roma descend from the Ten Lost Tribes, who allegedly spent some time in the Indian Subcontinent and afterwards emigrated back in the West. Indeed, there are some similarities between the Romani and the Jewish cultures, like the observance of the purity rules, the lack of interest in mass-conversions of the others, similarities which rather isolate the Jews amid the Abrahamic people. One could use the same similarities to present the Jews as Dharmic people to an unaware public. I want to emphasize that there is not a problem with these religious groups, there is a problem with these public misinterpretations.

From the years 1990s onwards, the considerable improvements in the possibilities of worldwide communication (like the development of the Internet, satellite TV, digital media etc.) made possible for Romani individuals to experience, for the first time, prolonged contacts with information stemming directly from South Asia. Surprisingly, the Desi society was revealed as being different than what has been conveyed in West as India, an interesting world with similar concerns, tastes and issues on stake as in the Romani culture. The witnessing of this worldview's normality in its local context shed a beneficent light upon the personal normality as a Romani individual and gave tools for asserting it. The most important is the possibility of a coherent presentation of the personal culture. Our cultural features, that could not be explicable until in the local contexts where we live and determined our isolation, became understandable and cultivable. This could make feasible the spreading of the Romani identity in the public sphere of the broad society (without betraying it by interpreting it through transient ideologies), thus to overcome the perception as abnormal, to be able to have the initiative in creating a desirable multicultural societies in the areas we live and to construct ties with other South Asians.

Obviously, only the popularity among large masses of the Romani people would endorse the feasibility of this approach. And a clarification of what would mean this and what can be done would be necessary. At the level of the elite, when rallied in the World Romani Congresses (from 1971 onwards), it was expressed already a desire to be recognized as an Indian ethnic group. However, until now, no further steps were made in this sense. As already said above, everything remained at an experimental level by Romani individuals, usually with constructions inspired by the contemporary ideology of nationalism. From the point of view of the Romani culture, they remain just some mental constructions, employed to create legitimacy and away from the identity they pretend they grasp. They were determined by our birth in this contemporary age when almost everybody is involved in the framework of nationalism, directly or indirectly, arousing the delusion that this is the right and the only approach.

Perhaps a way out of this deadlock is to present the mechanism of the nationalism, its relative nature, how it was preceded by other identity ideologies and probably followed by others, in order to make clear that we still have to look for a proper way of a public expression. The use of the nationalism, in the case of the Romani people, in the contemporary context, seems to follow two directions: the Balkanic way and the Russian way (by analogy with the presentation of the modern Balkanic and Russian societies in the article Roma/Gypsy - the reality vs. the image). The former favors an identification as South Asians/Desis, while the latter envisages an independent way (both, of course, from the nationalist point of view). This bifurcation is determined by the stress of the nationalist ideology on the presentation of an uninterrupted chain of external features' expression as the most reliable mean to obtain legitimacy (1). The same as in the European case, among the branches that experienced separated history for some time (and seek to assert their identity in the modern multicultural world), the bigger and the stronger emerged as the true "carrier" of the identity along the centuries. The people from the other branches also believed this (sometimes even more than those from the bigger one), thus remaining with the choice of copying or not the external features of the most important branch. They never thought if indeed this is the correct approach and thus, for example, in Europe, the Balkanites imported originally non-European music styles like Hip-Hop or Flamenco, but rejected the local ones.

There are no Romani developments to draw some conclusions about this approach and probably there will never be. In the European case, the most striking conclusion would be the distance between the elite and the people in both smaller branches, Balkanic and Russian. Whether following blindly the West or experimenting an independent way, the elite is in the same isolation from the real life, regardless of its authority. They could not accomplish until now their view of a modern Balkanic/Russian society, the population was not transformed, only mimicked it, persuaded by the moral authority or forced. A pragmatic description of the outcome would describe the Balkanic way as safer at the political level (keeping in mind the immense pain caused by the experiments of the Russian elite), while the Russian way safer at the cultural level (witnessing the state of cultural life in the modern Balkans, focused only on copying the West). However, the unaccomplishment of the main ideal keeps the contemporary Balkanic and Russian lingering in an uncertain, relative state of affairs, they doubtlessly need new ideas to normalize themselves. It was a wrong way from the outset.

A contemporary view, of the beginning of the 21st century, should acknowledge that this is not the right direction in asserting the identity in a multicultural, rapidly evolving world. These are only approximations and opinions from the older times when the different cultures did not live side by side. Probably it is the moment to challenge the idea that we ever knew the answer about how to assert the real identity and instead to begin a lucid study about what the identity means.

In fact, for the Romani people, this was and remains the main issue on stake all along the history. Our strong sense of identity prevented our dissolution as a minority, in most cases determining rejection and violence from a majority of population not accustomed to a multicultural world. The question about what can be done to be accepted as citizens with full rights and duties, citizens belonging to the Romani culture, integrated but not assimilated, is already many centuries old. Our respect for the real identity and our popular and non-violent skepticism for the shallow ideologies determined a reluctance to present the personal cultural features according to transient interpretations. This was usually misinterpreted by the others as hiding something, as a desire to be isolated, rarely questioning whether they understand our point of view (while we seem to understand theirs). They use to present us as backwards that have to civilize, not questioning why we are not amazed by other cultures, failing to see that we have a strong point of view.

We use to make a difference between the personal/group notions and the reality they use to describe (including the inner reality/identity of the person/group). This point of view is further validated and gains a wide range of possibilities of expression after the discovery that it is shared by the other people descending from our common ancestors in the Indian Subcontinent. It is the basic principle of the Dharmic way of life, acknowledging that every ideal of a person/group, every ideology does not grasp fully the reality, is something relative, ultimately a specialization, a niche. This vision of an infinity of simultaneously possible ideals is replicated in the propensity of the Dharmic societies to develop a jati system. It is acknowledged that it is not necessary to change the whole world according to an ideal, the influential ideal of a person/group is seen only as what it is, an abstract notion, and lived in its purity by its followers. A relative purity replicated by the relativity resulting from the comparisons between the castes' purity rules. Consequently, the best thing a Dharmic person can do is not necessarily moulding the reality in accordance to a certain ideal, but solving the question of how it is possible to see the reality directly and to harmonize it with the personal/group notions (notions that give the possibility of living a complex social life, but in the same time mould the Ego and tend to appear as a replacement of the reality).

Until the ancestors' departure from South Asia, the fundamental Dharmic issue was sometimes solved only on individual basis, by persons who later in their lives managed or not to express valuable advices for the rest of the people about the way from relativity to reality. The moment of our emigration, determined by the Muslim invasion of North India in the 11^th century, was one of a dramatic change, both for our people and for those who remained there. Another issue became important for the Dharmic worldview, namely, how to communicate, to deal with people who do not acknowledge the relativity of any personalized view? If there appears a injustice from them, how to confront it? In Ramayan, Ravan, albeit the personification of those who do not respect the rules, he thought from the Dharmic perspective, he was a Brahmin, he worked with the same cultural tools. If considering the details of the non-Dharmics' worldviews, in a confrontation for defending the personal/group rights, one may end up believing in having a better set of details, something misleading from a Dharmic position. For those who left, since there was no relative ideology to defend, as a minority among people with different worldviews, they focused on the fundamentals of their identity, fundamentals that did not find a public expression until nowadays. For those who remained in the Subcontinent, the focus was on preserving their positions in that land, with better chances of confronting the others when the supporters of non-Dharmic views started to think, in a positive or a negative manner, formally or informally, from the local point of view of the relativizing caste system. A problem occurred when the British Empire started to rule the Subcontinent from distance, without any hope to become relativized. Thus, it appeared a situation when 100,000 people ruled 300,000,000 who did not find a solution to confront them. In the first half of the 20^th century, Mohandas K. Gandhi, probably the same as the Roma, experiencing the fundamentals of the Dharmic identity from the point of view of a minority (in South Africa) amid people who see their identity in an undisputed manner, he came with the idea of the non-violence, confronting the others' injustice without entangling with their worldview. Thus it was possible to resume an independent life in the Subcontinent.

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(1) This is not the only possible way of reconnecting two branches of the same civilization, it is just the contemporary ideology. In Europe, for example, the Iberians became reintegrated centuries ago by accomplishing the criterion of the allegiance to the same religious dogma. That criterion was not itself more or less true than the contemporary nationalist one, it just belonged to another era.

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