Counter-Hegemony and the Postcolonial "Other"

Counter-Hegemony and the Postcolonial "Other"

Edited by

Michael Hayes and Thomas Acton

CAMBRIDGE SCHOLARS PRESS

Counter-Hegemony and the Postcolonial "Other", edited by Michael Hayes and Thomas Acton This book first published 2006 by Cambridge Scholars Press 15 Angerton Gardens, Newcastle, NE5 2JA, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright © 2006 by Thomas Acton and Michael Hayes and contributors

All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN 1-84718-047-7

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction.......................................................................................................vii Chapter One Some Problems in Bringing the Dialects and Culture of Smaller Romani Groups into the School Curriculum Thomas Acton, Professor of Romani Studies, University of Greenwich ............. 1 Chapter Two A Hegemony of Silence: The Case of India’s Denotified Tribes Ajay Dandekar .................................................................................................... 14 Chapter Three Obstacles to Healthy Living & Health Care for Irish Travellers Colm Power ........................................................................................................ 28 Chapter Four Irish Travellers and Images of Counterculturality Michael Hayes .................................................................................................... 45 Chapter Five Cultural Denigration: Media Representation of Irish Travellers as Criminal Anthony Drummond .......................................................................................... 75 Chapter Six Romani Origins and Romani Identity: A Reassessment of the Arguments Professor Ian Hancock, The Romani Archives and Documentation Center, University of Texas at Austin ............................................................................ 86 Chapter Seven Irish Travellers and Third-Level Education: Some Reflections John Heneghan, Coordinator, Traveller and Roma Initiative, University of Limerick........................................................................................ 97

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Chapter Eight A Few Thoughts on the Language and Cultural History of the Irish-American Pavee (Travellers) T. J. ................................................................................................................... 107 Chapter Nine Parlari/Parley - Mionteanga Lucht Siúil na nAontaí (Parlari/Parley -The Language of the Fairground Travellers) Michael Hayes, Traveller and Roma Initiative, Ollscoil Luimnigh (University of Limerick) ................................................................................... 119 Chapter Ten Rokkering on the Drag By Alex Smith (English Gypsy Showman) Transcribed by Michael Hayes, Traveller and Roma Initiative, University of Limerick, Ireland......................................................................... 127 Contributors .................................................................................................... 138

INTRODUCTION

This volume hopes to act as a new marker in the areas of Irish Studies and Migration/Diaspora Studies. It is also, in part, an attempt to give a voice to communities who have frequently found themselves on the margins of the socalled “mainstream” community - the hidden Irish, the migrant, the nomad and the “newer” and immigrant Irish. The scholars and activists writing here have engaged with the questions of ethnicity, identity, racism, cultural expression and the new historiography that characterises those newer disciplines often referred to now as Traveller Studies and Romani Studies. Of particular concern to this book’s contributors has been the necessity to address these broader issues within the context of the ever-changing dynamics of representation, modernisation, globalisation and the construction of the modern nation-state that has been the “litmus test” for many Western and Eastern European countries including Britain and more-recently Ireland. It is to be hoped that this collection of essays will function as a catalyst for some new and exciting areas of enquiry in the more “liminal” interstices of Irish Studies, Traveller Studies, Romani Studies and Diaspora and Migration Studies, the latter, a discipline which modern Irish society is only now beginning to interrogate on a more serious and scholarly level. Ireland is an increasingly multicultural country but as this volume makes clear this multiculturalism is not something that is particularly new. What is new is an acknowledgement of diversity and multiculturalism in Ireland and the necessity to create an understanding and a dialogue between the “mainstream” society, older minorities such as the Irish Travellers and the many newer immigrant communities such as the Roma who now make Ireland their home. For this to happen it is necessary that the voices of Travellers and Roma are listened to and that their distinctive worldview be given an opportunity for dialogue. It is hoped that this volume will go some way towards the development of such a process. Through such a form of dialogue it may be possible create the conditions for a more productive understanding of the relationship that exists between Irish Travellers, Roma and the rest of society. Dr. Michael Hayes, HEA Traveller and Roma Access Initiative, University of Limerick, Ireland. Dr. Thomas Acton, Professor of Romani Studies, School of Humanities, University of Greenwich, London.

CHAPTER ONE SOME PROBLEMS IN BRINGING THE DIALECTS AND CULTURE OF SMALLER ROMANI GROUPS INTO THE SCHOOL CURRICULUM THOMAS ACTON, PROFESSOR OF ROMANI STUDIES, UNIVERSITY OF GREENWICH

Is the development of Romani language, literature and educational curriculum merely to be considered as a matter of voluntary policy, or should we also seek to observe it as a natural process? Is the process of standardization or communalisation of the Romani language something akin to the building of a palace that we can understand by looking at the intentions of the prince and of the architect? Or is it like the growth of a tree, or a garden, which may be guided by the gardener only as long as she is strictly aware of the effects both of the biology of the vegetation and of the soil and environment that harbours it? Or are we too keen to make this distinction between nature and culture? The human creation of artefacts is also a natural process within the world. The prince employs the architect to make concrete his genius; but all around the world palaces have something in common, which undermines the claims to singularity of vision and will. And even the grandest of palaces has something in common with the gardener's hut and the houses of the nearby town, which suggests that our human animal functional needs do constrain the responses we make to our social and physical circumstances. As, over the last 50 years, social emancipation has come to replace assimilation as the legitimate human vision of the future of the Romani diaspora, so we have seen a parallel development of the Romani language, and of the formal representation of Romani culture within the institutions of literature and the

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educational curriculum. These developments have been the subject of intense debate among both Romani and gaje intellectuals and educationalists (Acton 1995). It is notable, however, that this debate has been conducted largely in normative terms, in dispute over the various prescriptions which experts make for the Romani future. There has, of course been a mass of naturalistic description of Romani; but in almost every case this has been combined with voluntaristic recommendations. Indeed, the passionate intensity of the debate derives partly from the high sense of duty and palpable conviction of many of the writers that the future of the Romani language and culture depends on their doing their work aright. The development of Romani is sometimes seen as a unique adventure and responsibility, and the linguists and educationalists as heroic architects rather than humble gardeners or mere naturalists.

The development of Romani sociolinguistics in context When we look, however, at the development of literary languages over the longer term, however, the gardening metaphor may appear more appropriate. Friedman (forthcoming) has shown how the strategies for the creation of literary Romani in Eastern Europe have paralleled those for the creation of other literary languages in the former communist bloc. We can perhaps, go further, to suggest that these strategies are part of a long process of linguistic development in Europe. For many centuries, during a long period of weakness and mass illiteracy, European literature was dominated by the ancient Latin and Greek languages. This domination was itself a mark of the relative unimportance of literature as an institution in society. Although the literary usage of these languages continued to develop and progress from the usages now called "classical", their distinction from the vernacular languages became both a badge of elite status and an instrument of elite domination. This was so even where the vernacular languages were recognisably daughter languages of the ancient, such as Modern Greek, Italian, Romanian and some of the tongues of Gaul and Iberia. When literacy and literature became more important for an increasing proportion, and eventually all, the members of society during the second millennium we see the steady emergence of literary versions of the vernacular languages. The development of some of these as national languages - even where closely related dialects have also become national languages, and the relegation of others to mere regional dialects has been an intensely political

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process. The promotion of vernaculars from the 16th century onwards was combined with - and to a certain extent masked by - an exaggeration of elite respect for ancient Latin and Greek, and a classicism which sought to discard the previous 1000 years of literary development of those languages, and incorporate that classicism, along with a fair amount of the actual Latin and Greek vocabulary, into the new literary languages of Europe. The figures that we remember today from these histories are the great writers such as Shakespeare, rather than the grammarians. The various vernacular or literary strategies we now tend to see as genres - complementary parts of the literary whole, rather than as cut-throat competitors. In this paper I am working within a perspective that sees the various developments in literary work among the Romani people as in continuity with this general European history, and exemplifying trends which have been common in the world's culture. The development of Romani literature and education will only surprise those who, had they been living 200 years ago would have thought the development of mass literacy in English or Russian an impossible dream. The relative lateness of the educational formalisation of Romani culture is explicable in terms of the oppression and marginalisation which has retarded the social emancipation of Roma; we do not need to hypothesise any intrinsic weakness of the culture itself, marked though it may be by the effects of oppression. From this perspective the first duty of the experts is not so much to create the Romani literature or curriculum, as to make sure that they do not obstruct it, and do not stand in the way of what is happening naturally every time young literate Roma from different places get together. Nonetheless, even if we see the work of linguists and educationalists as humble gardeners tending that which is growing naturally, this work of "easing the birthpangs" can be done more or less systematically, more or less effectively. The humble purpose of this paper is to consider how the development of work with smaller dialect-groups which are quite linguistically distant from the developing Common Romani differs from that in larger dialect groups, and what may make such work effective.

Oberwart and London - a comparison I take as my prime example, and as a model for the sensitive adaptation of the school curriculum to the culture of a smaller Romani group, the work of the Austrian group based in the Verein Roma in Oberwart and the University of Graz ( Halwachs 1996, Halwachs, Horvath et al. 1996, Wogg et al. 1998)

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which was vividly presented to the last Varna conference by Dieter Halwachs. In conversation with Halwachs afterwards, he told me that a number of observers had compared this project to the development of work in the English dialect of Romani and in the Irish Traveller language Gammon, carried out by the Gypsy Council and the National Gypsy Education Council in England in the early 1970s, (Acton, 1971, Acton et al. 1972, Acton and Connors 1974a, 1974b) with which I was closely associated. This comparison, though flattering, reinforced the need for humility, for it seems to me there are important reasons, which need to be made explicit, as to why the work of the Austrian group is a great deal more successful than that which started in England in the 1970s. At the same time, perhaps, pointing to problems which have lessened and reduced the influence of the English example may serve as a warning to the Austrians and others of problems that may lie down the road for them. Perhaps, however, not all of the relative deficiencies of the English adventure were the fault of those who carried it out. If it was more amateurish, it was because its animators were, at first, linguistic amateurs; if they made a less permanent impression this may reflect a climate in England generally less favourable to second-language learning in any circumstances. When the first Gypsy Council Caravan school was run on a disused airfield near London in 1967, the conventional wisdom of English Gypsylorism was that English Romani, with its largely English-derived grammar, was a mere relic of a previous "puri jib", just a special register of vocabulary. Not till the debate at Oxford between Ian Hancock and Donald Kenrick reported in Acton (1971) was English Romani discussed as a language in its own right. Challenging stereotyping notions, Hancock asserted (1971 p.15) "such terms as jargon, broken and bastardised...have little validity" and later commenting (1984 p.96) "….in terms of an historical continuum, the core of direct retention for [Angloromani] may be shown to be Romanes: Angloromani is Romanes with massive English morpho-syntactic and phonological intrusion." Also, till I heard it in 1969, I believed the Irish Traveller language, Gammon was not spoken in England - no less a person than Dora Yates, the elderly secretary of the Gypsy Lore Society assured me of this. The little books for children that we produced (Acton 1970, Acton et al. 1972, Acton and Connors 1974a and b) were derived directly from work carried out by volunteers in summer schools, in caravans or large vehicles parked directly in the Gypsy encampments. They used English orthography, and only in second editions

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began to benefit, somewhat grudgingly from the advice of professional linguists like Kenrick and Hancock. This amateurism is in sharp contrast to the professionalism of the Austrian group. At the start they theorised the localised and minority place of the Burgenland Roman dialect in the broader Romani context (Fennesz-Juhasz et al. 1996), thus equipping themselves to defend their project against the purist Romani standardisers. In a series of scholarly booklets entitled "Kodifizierung und Didaktisierung des Roman" they presented empirically based studies of topics such as the linguistic competences of Roman-speakers (Halwachs, Ambrosch and Schicker 1996), orthography, where again they had to defend themselves against more purist standardisers, (Halwachs 1996) and syntax (Wogg and Halwachs 1998). The preparation of actual educational literature (Halwachs, Horvath et al. 1996) is firmly grounded in this scholarly work, and systematically linked and responsive to the curriculum demands of schooling as well as to the concerns raised by the Romani children and adults, whereas the English booklets were shaped only by the latter. In this they had perhaps the advantage that Burgenland Roman, although influenced by German and Hungarian, and linguistically distant from the larger Romani groups, retains Roman grammatical inflections, where English Romani has largely lost them.

Problems in developing the use of English Romani Much of the early work on English Romani suffers from two crippling mistakes: first that since the grammar of English Romani is largely Englishderived, one can create English Romani texts by simply replacing a number of English words in a standard English text by items from the special vocabulary and the more the better, as Borrow (1874) does. Any attempt to read those Borrow texts which he himself composed to English Romani audiences will show this does not work. The second crippling mistake is to suppose that because the North Welsh Romani dialect documented by Sampson (1926) and the largely undocumented South Welsh Romani dialect retain in greater or lesser measure elements of Romani grammar, one may improve or make "more Romani" English Romani by preferring Welsh Romani usages which interfere in English Romani spoken by Welsh Gypsies. This tendency is distinctly marked in the other early study, that of Smart and Crofton (1875). In fact, of course, to produce authentic-sounding Anglo-Romani utterances one has not only to get the Romani derived elements correct (and correct in English Romani, not Welsh Romani terms) but also to get the English elements right: to use only those English-derived items (including archaic English elements no

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longer used in ordinary English) and no others. It is the latter, and the characteristic patterns of code-switching, which it is much harder for standardEnglish speakers to learn, and serves to mark them out from native Romani speakers. The fact of the matter remains that, although we now may theorise English Romani as a complete language, we have no complete description of it. When the English group finally got round - a decade after they began to produce children's books - to justifying their work academically, (Acton and Kenrick 1984), they lacked the depth of the Austrian team. Hancock (1984) makes a start on a holistic approach with an important grammatical description of the language but the vocabulary as edited by Kenrick and Wilson (in Kenrick and Acton 1984) in fact played to the notion that Anglo-Romani was a mere register by compiling a dictionary which included only the lexical items in AngloRomani (whether Romani, archaic English or of other derivation) which do not exist in current English. It is only relatively recently that a small number pf published descriptions of Irish Traveller Gammon have been produced (see McDonagh, (n.d.); Kid's Own, 2003; Cauley, 2005), even though the taboos of secrecy surrounding that language have begun to relax as organisations use it for political purposes, as happened to English Romani in the 1960s. If we look at educational work with English Romanichals and Irish Travellers today it has expanded very considerably, as my paper to the last Varna conference shows. Since the 1960s primary school registration of caravandwelling Romani and Irish Traveller children has expanded from less than 10% of the primary-school age-group to over 80%, with around 1000 specially funded teaching or education welfare posts. Many of the Local Education Authority services publish special children's books for Traveller children, but with a few exceptions, such as the Traveller Children's Alphabet published by Essex County Council, these make almost no use of English Romani or Gammon. This is not because gaje children would not understand, because most of these books are kept in special Travellers' resource collections, but because Teachers want the Travellers' books to look as much like gaje books as possible, to be in fact gaje books in which Travellers happen to figure. So children's books in English aimed at an audience which is both Romani and gaje (such as Acton 1981, and Acton and Gallant 1997) have been popular and accepted. But by the end of the 1990s the use of Romani has almost petered out in English Gypsy educational work. Why has this happened? Again, we who worked for English Romani in the 1970s misread the situation. We thought that, just as when we showed through

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voluntary work that the denial of education to Romani children was unnecessary and unjust, and so persuaded Local Authorities to assume the responsibility, so, if we showed that work in the English Romani language was feasible and beneficial, that too would be taken up by educationalists and linguists. We could not have been more wrong. In fact, as Traveller Education in England was professionalised, it was increasingly carried out by teachers without any previous knowledge of Gypsies, and who were, like the majority of English primary school teachers, effectively monolingual, suspicious and defensive about all foreign languagelearning, let alone a stigmatised language like Romani. I have shown elsewhere how the most important official British Report, that by Swann, on the difficulties faced by ethnic minorities came down very firmly against giving any linguistic rights to ethnic minorities and seems to presume that monolingualism is an educational advantage (Acton, 1986). If it is the general prejudice of the English that foreigners in general ought to learn English, perhaps we should have been less surprised that that they proved to pay only the most tokenistic, romantic respect to Romani. But once Traveller Education had become professionalised, the voluntary pioneers were out of the loop, regarded by professional teachers as out of date, old-fashioned, indeed unwelcome backseat drivers. It is not that the Romani books did not impress Traveller children - only 250 of Acton (1970) were printed, but individuals still show me treasured copies they have kept safe for a quarter of a century (cf Acton and Gallant, 1997); but they did not embed themselves in the school system. This should, perhaps be a warning to others. Do not assume that because you produce a substantial and successful body of work that it will automatically become the conventional wisdom. Do not, in other words, trust gaje power structures. To assure that lessons learnt survive the end of the project, we must stop thinking in terms of projects with a fixed lifetime, and seek permanent places for Romani language and culture in the educational system, for which of course perhaps the most important advance will be to increase the number of teachers who are themselves of Romani ethnicity. Perhaps another problem that will continue to face the Austrian group is criticism from those who feel that work with a small Romani group is a diversion from the struggle for a common international Romani. Certainly this is something that the main linguists who have been concerned with English Romani, Ian Hancock and Donald Kenrick, have had to face, even though both have lists of publications on large Romani dialects which massively outnumber

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their work on English Romani. But of course, the commitment of the scholars does not by itself demonstrate as Acton (1995) optimistically argues, that work with smaller and more linguistically distant dialects can be complementary to work with the emerging Common Romani.

The Beash Example An example that could be adduced to illustrate this complementarity, however, is the work with the Beash language in southern Hungary. Beash is perhaps about as far removed from Romani as a Gypsy language could be. Beash is an archaic Romanian dialect from the Banat region. Papp (1982b) shows that its vocabulary in the Pecs area of southern Hungary contains not a single Romani borrowing: at the level of vocabulary it is probably less influenced by Romani than any other European language. (Standard English, for example contains at least three Romani borrowings). In discussion with Papp, he and I jointly hypothesised, (Acton 1987) with some documentary evidence, that this might be because Beash is a “high” language, adopted by its speakers originally to avoid the slave status of Romani-speakers in Romanian lands, and reinforced by rigorously forbidding their children to speak Romani. In contemporary Hungary, however, (whatever may be the case in Romania, or the USA) the Romani status of the Beash is not disputed by themselves or anyone else, and the cultural action of their intellectuals could be taken as a model for small Romani groups, many of whom, like Romanichals and Beash, do not even use “Rom(a)” as an ethnonym. They have pursued a twin-track approach of both promoting their own ethnic identity and language, and of participating fully in pan-Romani political action and encouraging the learning of Common Romani, approached via Hungarian Lovari (Acton 1987). They have welcomed in gaje children to dance and language classes, and it is notable that Beash songs have even been included in the repertoire of Romani activist bands like Kalyi Yag, showing that, in Hungary at least, they have persuaded Rom intellectuals that the existence and flourishing of Beash presents no threat to the purity and dignity of Common Romani. This is something which both English Romani and Spanish and Catalan Calo have yet to do. Finally, Beash intellectuals have been major contributors to the development of the famous Gandhi school in Pecs, which is setting out to create the Romani intelligentsia of the future (Trehan 1998). What is common to both the Austrian and Southern Hungarian examples above is that the educational work at school level is grounded in scholarship at university level; that in both cases committed scholars in the universities have

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forged practical alliances with teachers and community activists, both Romani and gaje. Despite my own position as Professor of Romani Studies, the same kind of alliance has not been forged in England, and educational research, and government-sponsored research on Roma in general has been very different. It has been built on a profound distrust by government of “impractical intellectuals” and an emphasis on short-term practical solutions which we might generally describe as “the ideology of good practice”.

The superficiality of British government research The policy of “spreading good practice” has undoubtedly had some good effects in using the example of local education authorities who do make provision for the education of Travelling children to shame those who do not into action (Acton and Kenrick, 1991). The problem is that its relentless emphasis on accentuating the positive often meant that the investigation of bad practice, and gaps in provision are regarded as unnecessary, negative, and perhaps even downright treacherous. There was a confected outrage at the attempt to take an historical overview in the British part of European research in the 1980s, attempting overall estimates of trends, and highlighting neglected problems such as physical violence against Traveller children in schools. Teachers who accused this research of undermining their profession attempted to mobilise the latent disdain of many of their colleagues for academic research in general in order to discredit European-wide research (Acton and Kenrick, 1991). Comparison with other countries was seen as irrelevant, and comparison with the past was seen as "out of date". Such teachers write optimistic reports of their good practice to encourage other neophytes, blissfully unaware how exactly their experiences parallel other such attempts at "civilising Gypsies" throughout the past two centuries. The use of the Travellers’ own languages barely figures in such reports. How are we to retain the advantages of the "spreading best practice" approach, while at the same time wooing teachers away from some of the superficialities which have been associated with it? We need research which is grounded in the knowledge of past research and practice. This sounds simple; but there are structural reasons why it has been rare in work on Gypsies. "Gypsy research" often forms only a stage in the career of academics, often the PhD stage. During this, the budding academic is supervised by senior scholars without any specialist knowledge of Gypsies, and consequently has to devote most of his or her thesis to re-hashing the existing literature for them. Once graduated, the student, having realised how Romani studies are as marginalised as Gypsies

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themselves, rapidly finds other fields to research. And Romani studies go round in circles without making any cumulative progress. If such lack of progress has marked PhD projects taking three years, it has doubly afflicted government policy research which has to be carried out in six months or a year. Since the 1960s there has been a string of reports commissioned by various ministries, which have sought to find fresh thinking on "the Gypsy problem". The rationale for this has presumably been that those who have been working in the field for some time have "obviously" become biased by their closeness to it, so the thing to do is to find some expert on minorities in general who is uncontaminated by any previous contact with Gypsies. Such a person, with their fresh eye, will hopefully spot the magic solution which the troublesome and importunate "experts" have failed to spot for so many years. What invariably happens is that the "fresh eye" immediately begins to read the existing literature, and talks to teachers and Gypsy community workers and established academics, and over the period of the project manages to acquire a simplified version of the current consensus, which is then expressed in the report, which at first reassures people, by repeating "what we've been saying all along", but ultimately disappoints by its failure to say anything new. It thus swiftly disappears from the collective consciousness, thus making way for a new "fresh eye" to repeat the whole process a couple of years down the line. The reductio ad absurdum of this phenomenon is perhaps the 1998 report on Local Authority Powers for Managing Unauthorised Camping by Niner, Davis and Walker. Commissioned by a Conservative government to explore the success of the 1994 Criminal Justice Act, the researchers switched without qualms to a new brief from the Labour government to look at the problems left by that same 1994 Act. While carrying out their research, they made a good impression on almost everybody they spoke to, especially Gypsies, by their willingness to listen. As soon as the report was published however, Gypsies complained, with some justice, that it simply held up a mirror to existing local authority association views, without any real comprehension of Gypsy critiques of these. Although the resulting "Good Practice Guide" has been praised by lawyers acting for Gypsies for providing ammunition against unreasonable evictions, its academic credibility is at best limited. This is not to say that there is not a place for the swift consultancy job carried out by a generalist, which has the explicit task of providing an executive summary of existing thinking for a busy minister or civil service committee. The Department for Education and Employment has just located such a six-

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month quickie project at the London University Institute of Education and we await its findings with interest. But such consultancy should never be confused with research. Such consultancy cannot transcend existing thinking to provide fresh ideas. Research has to be grounded in the deep continuity of Romani Studies if it is to identify the fault-lines in existing solutions where, perhaps, there is fresh ground to be broken. Writing this paper brings home to me how far we have allowed the momentum which once existed in England for bringing Romani into the school curriculum to falter. Whether it gathers again will depend on the mood of educated Romani young people, not on the degree of effort of superannuated gaje academics; but those academics nonetheless have a duty to make and keep their work available to those who will come after. The lesson to ourselves hardly needs pointing out. The lesson for workers with Roman and Beash - and perhaps it is not wholly irrelevant to the mighty movement for Common Romani - is that they should never think that they can reach a point of success where they can say to themselves “We have demonstrated the need, demonstrated the method, demonstrated the viability of educational work and produced the materials: now others will take the message on board.” We must build our alliances of the community organisation, the school, the university, of Roma and gaje for the long term, as permanent institutions. We must pace ourselves to do this, and not be tricked by foundations, NGOs or government departments into flinging all our energies into short-term projects based on short-term finance which do not bring Romani culture into the permanent cultural and educational structures of the European states. As gardeners and naturalists we must liberate the development of the indigenous growths, the native plants of Romani life; and keep at bay the foreign agronomists who tell us that with the right fertiliser, or the right genetically modified variety, we could go for a quick cash crop instead.

References Acton T. 1970 (2nd Ed. 1971) Mo Romano Lil; Romanestan Publications, Oxford —. ed. 1971 (Ed.) Current Changes among British Gypsies and their place in International Patterns of Development, NGEC Conference Proceedings, Oxford —. (1981) Gypsies; London: Macdonald Education, & New York: Silver Burdett —. (1995) “Chibiaki politika - Politica Linguistica” Lacio Drom Vol.31(2), pp.6-17 —. "Reacting to Swann - some difficulties" in M.Waterson ed. (1986) The Swann Report and Travellers; London: ACERT, pp.17-42 —. (1987) "Using the Gypsies' Own Language: Two Contrasting Approaches in Hungarian Schools" in Tong D. ed. (1998) Gypsies: An Interdisciplinary Reader; New York: Garland, pp. 135-140

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—. and Connors M. (1974a) Mike's Book; London: Romanestan Publications, —. and Connors M. (1974b) Have you the Feen's Gread Nyocked; London: Romanestan Publications —., Denaro R and Hurley, B. (1971) The Romano Drom Song Book; Oxford: Romanestan Pubs., (New Enlarged edn, Burke, R and Stanley, D. (eds.) London, 1986) —. and Gallant D. (1997) Romanichals - the English Gypsies; Brighton: Wayland —. and Kenrick D.S (eds.) (1984) Romani Rokkeripen To-Divvus: the English Romani dialect and its contemporary social, educational and linguistic standing; London: Romanestan Publications —. and Kenrick D.S (1991) "From summer voluntary to European Community Bureaucracy: The development of special provision for Traveller Education in the United Kingdom since 1967" European Journal of Intercultural Studies Vol.1 (3), pp.47-62 Borrow G. (1874) Romano Lavo-Lil; London: John Murray Fennesz-Juhasz, Halwachs D.W., Heinschink, M.F., (1996) "Sprache und Musik der Österreichischen Roma und Sinti" Grazer Linguistische Studien No.46 pp. 61-110 Friedman, V. A. “Languages: Past and Current Problems in the Balkan States” in Acton T. and Dalphinis M. eds. (2004) Language, Blacks and Gypsies: Languages without a Written Tradition and their Role in Education; London: Whiting and Birch Halwachs D.W. 1996 Verschriftlichung des Roman; Oberwart: Verein Roma, —., Ambrosch G. and Schicker D. (1996) Roman, seine Verwendung und sein status innerhalb der Volksgruppe; Oberwart: Verein Roma —., Horvath E, Ambrosch, G. and Sarközi R, (1996) Amen Roman Pisinas; Oberwart/Verlag Hermagoras/Mohorjeva, Klagenfurt: Verein Roma Hancock I.F. (1971) "Comment" in Acton T. ed. (1971) Current Changes among British Gypsies and their place in International Patterns of Development, NGEC Conference Proceedings, Oxford pp 15-18 —. 1984 "The Social and Linguistic Development of Anglo-Romani" in Acton T. and Kenrick D.S (eds.) (1984) Romani Rokkeripen To-Divvus: the English Romani dialect and its contemporary social, educational and linguistic standing; London: Romanestan Publications Kenrick D. 1971 "Sociolinguistics of the Development of English Romani" in Acton T. 1970 (2nd Ed. 1971) Mo Romano Lil; Romanestan Publications, Oxford pp.5-14. Kid's Own (2003) Can’t lose Cant: [a book of Cant, the old language of Irish Travellers by children in County Kildare, Ireland]; Sligo: Kid's Own Publishing Partnership McDonagh, M. (n.d.) Cant Glossary; Kildare: Navan Travellers Workshop Niner P, Davis H and Walker B, (1998) Local Authority Powers for Managing Unauthorised Camping Rotherham: Department of Employment, Transport and the Regions Papp G. (1982a) A Beásh Ciganyok Román Nyelujarassy; Pecs: (Hungary), Janus Pannonius University Romani Studies Series (General ed. Varnagy E.) —. (1982b) Beásh-Magyar Szótar; Pecs, Hungary: Janus Pannonius University Romani Studies Series (General ed. Varnagy E.) Vol VI. Sampson J. (1926) The Dialect of the Gypsies of Wales; Oxford: Oxford University Press

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Crofton H.T. and Smart B.C (1875) The Dialect of the English Gypsies; London: Asher Trehan N. (1998) “Afterword” in Tong D. (1998 Gypsies: An Interdisciplinary Reader; New York: Garland, pp. 140-5 Wogg M., Halwachs D.W. (with Ambrosch G., Glaeser U and Martens K) 1998 Syntax des Roman; Oberwart: Verein Roma

CHAPTER TWO A HEGEMONY OF SILENCE: THE CASE OF INDIA’S DENOTIFIED TRIBES AJAY DANDEKAR

This essay examines the categorisation of Indian tribal peoples which occurred during the nineteenth century and the enduring influence which these forms of categorisation continue to exert on the social and political policies as applied to tribal peoples in the present day. A particular focus is on present-day approaches and directives as instituted in relation to the tribal peoples who live in the state of Maharashtra a state in the centre-west of India facing onto the Arabian Sea. The present-day concerns of these formerly nomadic peoples are employed as a basis for a discussion of the social and legislative status of tribals in India generally. In colonial times anthropology was very much a part of the colonial enterprise, and while it was often sympathetic towards the peoples it studied, it was still an attempt to know and understand the peoples of the empire in order to rule them. Indeed, most colonial anthropology "dichotomies and essentialises its portrayal of others and...functions in a complex but systematic way as an element of colonial domination." [Clifford 1988:268]. Hence "there is a constant battle over relations of meaning, one which points to a more fundamental conflict over the relations of power". [Giroux 1981: 307] This politics of anthropology underscores the "contradictory consciousness" that eventually makes change possible. (Gramsci 1996:333]. For if all knowledge is, by definition, situated within the society that produces it, then it must change in tandem with the diverse and ever-changing social relationships that exist there. It is this dialectic that sets the context for the politics of anthropology. Our endeavour in this essay is not to deviate into a discussion on the sociology of knowledge, but to contextualise an ethnographic collection of texts in accordance with the contemporary situation. Let us now consider the so-called “tribal”, in the context of the above. According to Shereen Ratnagar (2004), while it is not possible to argue from the

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perspective of the indigenous, it is certainly the case that we can view matters from the perspective of the indigenous, in this case the marginalized indigenous (Ratnagar: 2004). The first question to be asked pertains to the defining elements of the term ‘tribal’. It is not ethnicity that marks out any group as a tribal society, but its social organization. One way of looking at this question is to focus on the fact that tribes are societies without class or caste hierarchies. All tribesmen or tribeswomen are not equal in terms of human talents, industriousness, or wealth. Neither are they born into either high or low-status families, or stratified into ruling elites and commoners on the basis of ownership of property or the labour that they can command. By definition, all members of a tribe hold their natural resources jointly, whether these resources include agricultural land, forests, pasture grounds, fisheries, or water resources. A tribal family tills a plot of land because it has the right to do so by virtue of birth within that tribe. No family is deprived of access to these resources; all members have rights to land, or to graze their animals on open ground within the tribe’s terrain. On the other side of the coin, no member of a tribe has the right to randomly dispose of his plot to an outsider or to sell it off. Thus tribal tenure is joint tenure, and qualitatively different from private property as applied to the ownership of land. Tribal cultures do not make commodities of their natural resources. In other words the term “tribe” can be said to be applied to that specific context whereby individual rights are embedded within the framework of community rights, where production is for consumption only; and where there exists an authority structure as opposed to one simply dictated by power alone. The term ‘Adivasi’ meaning the 'original inhabitants' was first used in the Chotanagpur region of Bihar during the 1930s and was extended to other regions in the 1940s by A.V. Thakkar, who worked among the tribals there. The Gandhians also popularized other polite equivalents such as the terms ranipaja, vanyajati and girijan. Viewed from a historical perspective, the Indian term 'Adivasi' referred to - and continues to refer to - a wide variety of communities that had remained relatively free from the control of outside states in a previous era; but who were eventually subjugated during the colonial period and brought under the control of the state. Today the Indian Constitution classifies these communities as "Scheduled Tribes". However, there also exists another set of people who were classified as “criminals” by an act of 1871 and who today continue to remain in a stigmatised category, a category of peoples who, as a consequence, are located at the bottom rung of Indian society.

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The Historical Background The “de-notified” tribes of India are spread over a vast area incorporating the nine states of Tamilnadu, Andhra-Pradesh, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Gujarat, West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh, Delhi and Madhya Pradesh. These tribes today find themselves at a crossroads in terms of their relationship with the rest of Indian society and their integration within that society. A brief examination of these tribes from the historical perspective explains why they find themselves occupying this present-day position within Indian society, a position which is both liminal and marginalized from the main organs of that same society. In the nineteenth century the colonial government decided to categorise these pastoral nomads, itinerant traders and other disbanded groups who include the members of defeated native armies and other wandering communities as different from those settled agriculturists of a fixed abode. The then administration decided that these wandering communities could not be situated within preconceived categorisations – whether administrative, economic or social. This was the context to the passage of the "Criminal Tribes Act of 1871 or Act XXVII - (henceforth referred to as the CTA). It is important to look at the legal provisions of the CTA which I will now examine here. The Criminal Tribes Act of 1871 was the beginning of a series of legislative injunctions all of which followed a similar pattern. Legal interventions of a similar type followed this Act at regular intervals so as to fine-tune it, elaborate upon it, extend its jurisdiction and make increasingly “finer” distinctions between those people considered ‘criminal’ and those regarded as ‘noncriminal’. The classification of those communities considered ‘criminal’ was fairly broad-based according to the CTA who described them using such terms as - "A tribe, gang, or class". The colonial masters did not wish to take risks and leave any possible loopholes in their mode of categorisation. None of these travelling communities could be situated within any of the pre-conceived categorisations according to which the colonial administration had previously classified different communities however. In 1874, for example, there was a further amendment to the Act which sought to “fine-tune” this “criminalised” category even further as follows – "In this Act the words 'tribe', 'gang' and 'class shall be deemed to include any portion or members of a tribe, gang or class". It is interesting to note the exact provisions of the Act, particularly in the light of recent debates in Western society in relation to the overt assimilation of traditionally nomadic peoples during the past four decades or so. This frequently overt and systematic process of assimilation in the West has many parallels with similar processes which took place in parts of Asia including India and as implemented through the organs of the state in the later nineteeth century and

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early twentieth century. These included such measures as the criminalisation of nomadism, increased forms of registration and control in terms of education, accommodation and health services, and the use of punitive measures such as prison and reform schools as a buttress to all of these other measures.

Language of the Act The Criminal Tribes Act of 1871, passed by the governor of India in Council, (received the assent of the Governor General on the 12th October, 1871), an Act for the Registration of Criminal Tribes and Eunuchs as modified up to 1st , February 1897. Whereas it is expedient to provide for the registration, surveillance and control of certain criminal tribes and eunuchs, it is thereby enacted as follows: This Act may be called “The Criminal Tribes’ Act, 1871”. (Commencement, repealed by Act XVI of 1874, section 1 and Schedule, Part I.) This section and section 20 extend to the whole of British India…to be in force in the whole or any part of the territories under its government. Definition of the Tribe, Gang and Class

Part I, Criminal Tribes Local Government to report what tribes should be declared criminal. If the local government has reason to believe that any tribe, gang, or class of person is addicted to the systematic commission of non-bailable offences, it may report the case to the Governor General in Council, and may request his permission to declare such tribe, gang or class to be a criminal tribe… …The report shall state the reason why such a tribe, gang or class is considered to be addicted to the systematic commission of non-bailable offences, and as far as possible, the nature and the circumstances of the offence in which the members of the tribe are proposed to have been concerned; and shall describe the manner in which it is proposed that such a tribe, gang or class shall earn its living when the provisions hereinafter contained have been applied to it… If such a tribe, gang or class has no fixed place of residence, the report shall state whether such a tribe, gang, or class follows any lawful occupation, and Government, the real occupation of such a tribe, gang, or class, or as a pretence for the purpose of facilitating the commission of crimes, and shall set forth the ground on which such opinion is based; and the report shall also

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specify the place of residence in which such a wandering tribe, gang, or class is proposed to be made- for enabling it to learn its living therein… If upon the consideration of such a report, the Governor-General…may authorize the local government to publish in the local Gazette a notification declaring that such a tribe, gang, or class is a criminal tribe… The declaration of the local government that any such tribe, gang or class, or any part of it, is resident in any district, shall be conclusive proof of such residence…Upon receiving such direction, the said magistrate shall publish a notice in the place where the register is to be made, calling upon all the members of such a tribe, gang or class, or of such portion thereof as is directed to be registered, to appear, at a time and place therein specified… Any member of any such tribes, gang or class, who, without lawful excuse - the burden of proving which shall be lie upon him - shall fail to appear according to such notice, or shall intentionally omit to furnish such information…shall be deemed guilty of an offence under the first part of section 174 or 176 or 177 of the Indian Penal Code… The register, when made shall be kept by the district superintendent of police, who shall, from time to time, report to the said magistrate any alterations which ought to be made therein, either by way of addition or erasure…No alteration shall be made in such a register except by or order of the said Magistrate.. Any tribe, gang or class, which has been declared to be criminal, and which has no fixed place of residence, may be settled in a place of residence prescribed by the local government…or may, by order of the local government, be removed to any other place of residence… The Local Government may, with the sanction of the Governor General in council, place any tribe, gang or class, which has been declared to be criminal, or any part thereof, in a reformatory settlement. 17A (1) The local government may establish and maintain a settlement for children and may separate and remove them from their parents and place in such a reformatory settlement the children of the registered members of any tribe, gang or class, which has been declared to be criminal. (3) The superintendent of a reformatory settlement for children shall be deemed to be the guardian, within the meaning of Act No. XIX of 1850 (concerning the

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binding of apprentices), of every child detained in such a settlement; and such a superintendent, may if he shall think fit, and subject to any ruler which the local government may make in this behalf, apprentice such a child under the provision of the aforesaid act. “Explanation – the term children in this section includes all persons under the age of 18 and above the age of four years.” The local government may, with the previous consent of the Governor General in council, make rules to prescribe – the form in which the register shall be made… the limits within which persons whose names are on the register shall reside; conditions as to hold passes, under which such persons may be permitted to leave the said limits; conditions to be inserted in any such pass as to (a) the places where the holder of the pass may go or reside; (b) the officers before whom, from time to time, he shall be bound to present himself; (c) and the time during which he may absent himself; …inspection of the residences and villages of any such tribe, gang or class, and the prevention or removal of contrivances for enabling the residents therein to conceal stolen property, or to leave their place of residence without leave; The mode in which the criminal tribes shall be settled and removed; The control and supervision of reformatory settlements; The works on which and the hours during which persons placed in a reformatory settlement shall be employed Any person registered under the provisions of this Act, who is found in any part of British India, beyond the limits so prescribed for his residence, without such a pass as may be required by the said rules, or in place or at a time not permitted by the conditions of his pass, or who escapes from a reformatory settlement, may be arrested without warrant by any police-officer or village watchman, and taken before a Magistrate… It shall be the duty of every village headman and village watchman in a village in which any persons belonging to a tribe, gang or class which has been declared criminal reside, and of every owner or occupier of land on which any such persons reside, give the earliest information in his power at the nearest police station… And it shall be the duty of every village headman and village

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watchman in a village to give the earliest information…regarding the arrival of any persons who may reasonably be suspected of belonging to any such tribe, gang or class. Convictions under any of the many subsections of this Act could entail punishments such as fines, whipping and “rigorous imprisonment” for anywhere between two and seven years or transportation for life. The major provisions of the CTA (Criminal Tribes Act), as noted above, provided for the registration of all declared criminal tribes. All members of criminal tribes had to report to the authorities at regular intervals and had to inform the authorities if they were to absent themselves from their residences for a day or more! For journeys outside settlements special passes were required and any tribal member caught without a pass outside the settlement was to be imprisoned. All members of a declared criminal tribe had to answer a special roll call, which could take place at any random and unscheduled hour. If any member failed to respond, the onus was on the missing person to prove to the officer-in-charge at the settlement that his/her absence from residence had involved no criminal acts or intentions. This Act was subsequently amended in 1892 and 1897 and the penalties for contravening it were increased for second and third convictions to include longer periods of imprisonment or transportation to another colonial outpost for life. Amendments to the Act also further enhanced the Act’s cruellest provisions as relating to the separation of children from their parents and their incarceration in those reformatories reserved solely for the children of the declared criminal tribes and castes. Regional and local governments were given absolute rights over the future location of any "unsettled" tribes and could even deport a “settled” tribe from one area to another if the earlier area was not considered suitable. In 1911 a rule was introduced which resonates with current-day approaches to suspected societal “deviants” or criminals. This was the injunction that all members of declared criminal tribes would have to be fingerprinted at the nearest police station, so that they could be more easily monitored and “tracked down” if they tried to escape from a particular settlement. Another amendment to the Act as introduced in 1911, declared that the so-called criminal tribes were not necessarily to be compulsorily "settled" on those lands allotted to them by the government. Rather than being forcibly “settled” these tribes were to be registered, finger-printed and subjected to regular surveillance instead. The local government did not take any responsibility for them subsequent to their registration however. (CTA, 1911, Section 12). The underlying agenda of reforming the ‘criminal tribes’ by providing them with gainful occupation “in captivity” was not a sustainable project however and the wandering tribes were never turned into cultivators on government waste land.

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By 1911, the attempt to ‘settle’ the tribes had to be given up as a failure and the new rules which were to be applied were more “realistic” or “pragmatic” as compared with before. Those ‘criminal tribes’ committing non-bailable offences would still be subject to enforced registration but they would not be settled on any land. Instead the police surveillance of these groups would become much tighter, so that the necessities of maintaining a security system consisting of village chaukidars and watchmen could be obviated and the expenses of providing ploughs, seeds and other cultivating equipment as associated with settlement could be defrayed. In Maharashtra, the Antrolikar Committee examined the question of the “rehabilitation” of those ex-criminal tribes, who were denotified in Maharashtra with effect from the 13th of August, 1952. The Committee felt that the Habitual Offenders Restriction Act should be made simpler and wider in scope "in order to restrict all habitual offenders from Ex-Criminal Tribes and also others as action on these few notorious characters will enable other Ex-Criminal Tribes to live peacefully in their localities". (Budhan, Oct-Nov. 1998, 13-14). It was only after Indian independence that the unconstitutional nature of the designation "criminal tribes" – was formally recognized and acknowledged and the communities that had come under the rubric of the Act were then finally "Denotified". The de-notification process has remained only at the legal and beaurocratic level since however. It has not been translated into a change of mind-set on the part of the state or of the non-tribal people generally. In reality the older prejudiced mind-set as relating to the tribal peoples has, instead, been “legalized” and “reified” through a subsequent piece of legislation - the ‘Habitual Offenders Act’ (1959) – which states: As soon as a person belonging to any community and particularly to the ExCriminal tribes is produced before a Magistrate for the second offence under the IPC against property and person he should be handed over to experts in psychoanalysis, criminology and allied sciences to examine him. The result of such an examination should be communicated to the Magistrate who thereafter should proceed to pass judgment on such accused.

Despite repeated advocacy campaigns on the part of the denotified tribals have put up, the Indian state today shows no intention of doing away with this act. It can be seen that the colonial government’s antipathy towards these communities was shared by those “settled” Indian communities, who were part of the “mainstream” and hierarchical social networks and political economy, as opposed to these traditionally nomadic communities of “tribals” who were not

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seen to belong to any acknowledged framework of social reference. Of course these tribal communities had originally been either forest-based communities or nomadic artisans and traders before they were categorised (or notified) as “criminal” tribes during the colonial period. Today, many of these communities have lost their traditional niche-occupations as a consequence of social change and increased urbanisation and economic industrialisation. The Banjaras1 ,for instance, have lost their traditional role as long-distance traders due to the huge changes which have taken place in relation to transport technology and enhanced road networks (see Chowdhary and Habib, 2004) Washbrook (forthcoming, OUP) has examined these industrial developments from a historical perspective and describes these changes as “reflecting both European cultural norms and fears at the thinness of its social power”. State companies, for example, set themselves against the physical mobility of South Asian populations -- at least within India – from a very early juncture. They set out to dismantle many of the broader labour markets which had existed previously but which were now viewed as a threat to ‘order’, a process whereby the banjaras and other groups were now treated as “incipient criminals.” In a similar manner those artisan communities who traditionally survived as craftsmen and artisans of various types are fast losing their importance within the rural economies of today. The Pardhis 2 have lost their forest ecology due to deforestation and strict “new” policies as applied to the cultivation of forested areas. These communities are left with few other choices than assimilation with new forms of economy by taking on “new” work practices. A glimpse of the situation today as evidenced for many tribal people can be gained by a brief examination of some recent studies (surveys) of the living conditions of these “denotified” communities in the state of Maharashtra. The spectrum that is their struggle for 1

The Banjaras are a traditionally nomadic “tribal” people or minority who live in many areas across the Deccan region of central and southern India. In recent decades many people from this minority group have immigrated to the cities in search of work. The Banjaras have their own distinct culture and language, a language which is very different from other languages spoken in this region. 2 The Pardhis, also known as Phase Pardhi or Phasse Pardhi are a “tribe” in India. This ethnic group is often stereotyped as a criminal tribe and frequently faces harrassment by Indian law enforcement agencies. Communities of Pardhis are to be found mostly in Maharashtra and parts of Madhya Pradesh. The Phasse are a sub-tribe of the Pardhi caste. The Phasse make up a population of about 60,000 in total and include as many as 10,000 child beggars who live in Bombay. Pardhi is the term for "hunter". The criminal branding of the tribe goes back to 1871 after the British colonial administration passed the "Criminal Tribes Act." About a hundred and fifty tribes were then categorised as “criminal”, and the police were given sweeping powers to arrest them and watch over their movements. Despite being exonerated by the Indian government, the Pardhi community is still frequently perceived as indulging in criminal