Romani people in Bulgaria (; ) constitute Europe's densest Romani minority. The Romani people in Bulgaria may speak Bulgarian, Turkish or Romani, depending on the region.
Statistics
According to the latest census in 2011, the number of the Romani is 325,343, constituting 4.4% of the total population, in which only one ethnic group could be opted as an answer and 10% of the total population did not respond to the question on ethnic group. In a conclusive report of the census sent to Eurostat, the authors of the census (the National Statistical Institute of Bulgaria) identified the census results on ethnicity as a "gross manipulation". The former head of the National Statistical Institute of Bulgaria, Reneta Indzhova claims to have been fired by the Bulgarian Prime Minister in 2014 for attempting to check the actual number of the Romani and implied that neither the census did enumerate the Romani, nor its statistics did provide the "real data".
The previous 2001 census recorded 370,908 Romani (4.7% of the population). The preceding 1992 census recorded 313,396 Romani (3.7% of the population), while a secret backstage 1992 census ordered by the Ministry of Interior recorded a figure of 550,000 Romani (6.5% of the population); the Ministry of Interior ordered at least two other secret censuses to enumerate the Romani in denial, the one in 1980 recorded 523,519 Romani, while the one in 1989 recorded that the number of the Romani was 576,927 (6.5% of the population) and that over half of the Romani identified as Turks. The majority of the estimated 200,000-400,000 Muslim Romani tend to identify themselves as ethnic Turks, some deny their origin, or identify as Bulgarians.
The demographic collapse in Bulgaria that has affected most ethnic groups in the country has not had the same effect on the Romani. According to data of the European Commission, to which Eurostat belongs, the Romani in Bulgaria number 750,000 and they constitute 10.33% of the population. An NGO disputes this claim and estimates that the number of the Romani in Bulgaria is twice as high, stating their population grows by 35,000 a year.
Overview In Bulgaria, Romani are most commonly referred as Tsigani (цигани, pronounced ), an exonym that some Romani resent as derogatory and others embrace. The form of the endonym Roma in Bulgarian is romi (роми). They are generally younger, according to the 2011 census they make up 10.2% of the population aged up to 9 years, on a note 14.9% of the total age group being non-respondents.
In Bulgaria Roma are disliked: 59% to 80% of non-Roma have negative feelings towards Roma. Roma constitute the majority of prison population according to self-identification of inmates, with 7000 prisoners (70%) out of 10,000 in total. According to 2002 data, the poverty rate among Romani is 61.8%, in contrast to a rate of 5.6% among Bulgarians. In 1997, 84% of Bulgarian Romani lived under the poverty line, compared with 32% of ethnic Bulgarians.The Roma in Central and Eastern Europe: Avoiding the Dependency Trap, pp. 31, 39. In 1994, the poverty rate of Romani was estimated at 71.4%, compared with 15% for Bulgarians. The unemployment rate of non-Romani in Bulgaria was 25%, while of the Romani it was 65% in 2008, for instance in neighbouring Romania and Hungary the Romani had much lower unemployment rates—14% and 21% respectively. In 2016 23% of the Romani in Bulgaria are employed. The unemployed receive more financial aid than other citizens, especially for children, which may have prompted the higher birth rates of the Romani.
In 2011 the share of Romani with university degree reached 0.3%, while 6.9% have secondary education; the same share was 22.8%/47.6% for Bulgarians.
The Bulgarians are more negative towards the Romani than the Turks, with 30-50% rejecting various interactions and friendship with Romani. Although only 25% of Romani parents object to their children to be married with a Bulgarian and a Turk, only 4% of the Bulgarians and 6% of the Turks would marry a Romani person. Romani are avoided by the majority traditionally, especially for marriage, however, there are ethnically mixed people with Gypsy and Bulgarian or Turk parents who are called жоревци "zhorevtsi" (from the common name George). It is more common for a Roma Man to marry a Bulgarian or Turk woman, than for a Roma woman to marry a non-Romani Man.
Bulgaria participates in the Decade of Roma Inclusion, an international initiative to improve the socio-economic status and social inclusion of Roma, with eight other governments committing themselves to "work toward eliminating discrimination and closing the unacceptable gaps between Roma and the rest of society". The rights of the Romani people in the country are also represented by political parties and cultural organizations, most notably the Civil Union "Roma". Famous Roma from Bulgaria include musicians Azis, Sofi Marinova and Ivo Papazov, surgeon Aleksandar Chirkov, politicians Toma Tomov and Tsvetelin Kanchev, footballer Marian Ognyanov, and 1988 Olympic boxing champion Ismail Mustafov.
The occupations of Bulgarian Roma include fortune-telling, music, horse dealing, bear keeping, entertainment, animal training, acrobatics, blacksmithing, coppersmithing, tinsmithing, woodworking, sieve making, comb making, basket weaving, shoemaking, and seasonal agricultural work. Many of these professions persist in Bulgaria today, alongside middleman peddling, black market trading, and the nearly universal presence of wage labor. Within the realm of wage labor, the Roma in Bulgaria find themselves in a low-status economic position: unskilled factory jobs are prevalent, as well as agricultural work on cooperative farms, street cleaning, and railroad maintenance.
History Origin The ancestors of the Romani people originated in South Asia, presumably from the present-day regions of Punjab, Rajasthan and Sindh.
Linguistic evidence reveals that the roots of the Romani language lie in what is now India: the language has grammatical characteristics of Indian languages and shares with them a big part of the basic lexicon, for example, body parts or daily routines. More exactly, Romani shares the basic lexicon with Hindi and Punjabi. It shares many phonetic features with Marwari, while its grammar is closest to Bengali.
The language of the Romani people is called Romani [romaňi čhib]. It is an Indo-Aryan language, which belongs to the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European family. The language retains much Indic morphology, phonology and lexicon, although it has been significantly influenced by contact with other languages, particularly Persian, Armenian, Byzantine Greek. It's grammar and phonology also reflect South Slavic influence.
Genetic findings in 2012 suggest the ancestors of the Romanies originated in present-day northwestern India and migrated as a group. According to a genetic study in 2012, the ancestors of present Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes populations of northern India, traditionally referred to collectively as the Ḍoma, are the likely ancestral populations of the modern European Roma.
In February 2016, during the International Roma Conference, the Indian Minister of External Affairs stated that the people of the Roma community were children of India. The conference ended with a recommendation to the Government of India to recognize the Roma community spread across 30 countries as a part of the Indian diaspora.
Migration to Bulgaria
The Romani people emigrated from South Asia possibly as early as the 5th century. They settled in Persia, followed by Armenia, before arriving in the ancient Greek city of Byzantium likely in the 9th century, though possibly as early as the 7th century. The shift in the self-identification of the Romani people from "Doma" to "Roma"/"Romani" is believed to have taken place during the Romanies' arrival and settlement in the Balkans during the Byzantine era. "Roma"/"Romani" is believed to have been influenced by the Medieval Greek word Romaios, meaning Eastern Roman, referring to the inhabitants of the Byzantine Empire—which they called Romanía.Hancock, Ian. We Are the Romani People (Ame sam e Rromane džene). Hatfield: University of Hertfordshire Press, 2002. pp. 6–7. "Some writers have suggested that its form was influenced, during our ancestors' time in the Byzantine Empire (then called Romanía), by the Greek word Romaios ('Roman')" It is suspected that given the proximity between Bulgaria and historical Byzantium, it is possible that the Romani people may have been present in the territory of present-day Bulgaria as early as the 7th century.
Bulgarian ethnologists Elena Marushiakova and Veselin Popov assert that no direct evidence indicates when precisely the Romani first appeared in Bulgaria. While they mention that other Bulgarian and international scholars have associated the 1387 Charter of Rila term Agoupovi Kleti with the Romani, they hold that the term refers to seasonal lodgings for mountain herdsmen. Instead, they delimit the mass settlement of Romani in Bulgarian territory between the 13th and 14th centuries, supporting this time frame with 13th- and 14th-century documents referring to Romani presence in the surrounding Balkan states.Marushiakova et al., Gypsies in the Ottoman Empire: a contribution to the history of the Balkans, p. 19 According to Bulgarian sociologist Ilona Tomova, Ottoman fiscal reports between the 15th and 17th centuries indirectly indicate Romani settlement in Bulgaria since the 13th century, as most registered Romani possessed Slavonic names and were Christians.Tomova, Ethnic Dimensions of poverty in Bulgaria, p. 15 "Although the largest Roma migration wave to the Bulgarian lands seems to have occurred in the 13th and 14th centuries, many Roma arrived with the Ottoman troops, accompanying army craftsmen and complementary military units."
In addition, during the 14th and 15th centuries, Muslim Romani arrived in Bulgaria with the Ottoman rule, serving as auxiliaries, craftsmen, musicians and other professions.Marushiakova et al., Gypsies in the Ottoman Empire: a contribution to the history of the Balkans, p. 26 Unlike the Ottoman Empire's other subjects in the millet system, Romani were governed based on their ethnicity, not their religious affiliation.Celik, Exploring Marginality in the Ottoman Empire: Gypsies or People of Malice (Ehl-i Fesad) as Viewed by the Ottomans Authors, p. 5 Ottoman tax records first mention Romani in the Nikopol region, where 3.5% of the registered households were Romani. Under Mehmed II's reign, all Romani – Christian and Muslim – paid a poll-tax that was otherwise imposed only on non-Muslims.Marushiakova et al., Gypsies in the Ottoman Empire: a contribution to the history of the Balkans, p. 27
During the 16th century, Suleiman I enacted laws to prohibit the mingling of Muslim and Christian Romani and to administer taxes collected from the Romani: the 1530 Gypsies in the Rumelia Region Act and a 1541 law for the Romani sancak.Marushiakova et al. "A History of the Roma in Bulgaria". Patrin Web Journal. Retrieved on 2009-03-01. Muslim Romani were taxed less than Christian Romani, yet they were taxed more than other Muslims for not adhering to Islamic laws and customs.Barany, The East European gypsies: regime change, marginality, and ethnopolitics, p. 85 Ottoman imperial assembly registers from 1558 to 1569 characterize the Romani as ehl-i fesad (people of malice), charging them with crimes such as prostitution, murder, theft, vagrancy and counterfeiting.Celik, Exploring Marginality in the Ottoman Empire: Gypsies or People of Malice (Ehl-i Fesad) as Viewed by the Ottomans Authors, p. 20
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