Founding Myth

Tonight, I undertook my first (first ever) interview for my research project for ASN. The interview was with Lola, director of a local NGO doing various projects with the Roma community. She told me this founding story. What follows is the exact transcript of our conversation, with some mood setting and clarifications of my own.

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In the background, a young girl is playing with a blond, blue eyed, life size doll. She squeezes the dolls hand and a young German girls voice screeches "Wir sind die beste Freunde!" Everyone laughs. From time to time, over the next few hours, the doll would interrupt our dialogue, and we always acknowledged it with a smile and a chuckle.

"You can't imagine. Non-Roma students take interest in Roma culture... I was telling them a legend about why Roma were left India. This legend is about some Indian Princess. Uhm, they, uhm, Roma, I don't know the word in English for that? They have a pleme? When they are living together its calling?"

A community?

"Something like that yes. Roma community were there and some of Magicians told to the Indian that some army, big army, danger army, will come and will kill everyone, uh, every, uh King and  all King relative. But the magicians said that army can do nothing to Roma community. So King decided to bring his one daughter, only one daughter, to the leader of, uhm, of settlement [laughter].

So, that leader has son, and his son and Kings daughter were growing up together like brother and sister, but in moment they were in love. So one part of community, uh, and mother of boy told him the truth, that Gana is not his real sister. So they decided to marry, and one part of community stand against Chan and Gana [the wider community was never enlightened to the fact that they were not brother and sister. Thus they were expelled because, in the eyes of the community, they were living in sin], and other was with them, so they decided to separate. And the part of community that was against them, told them to go somewhere, to leave India. So they left India.

And we are thinking that all of us are part of community who are trying to find real land for us."

~~

Why did I chose this myth as a post? As Lola was telling me the story, I thought back to my Political Theory class, and how, in our discussion of Machiavelli, we focused a lot on his emphasis on keeping the founding myth central to the identity of a community. For Machiavelli, a community was kept strong through constant reversal back to the source of its creation. He understood the inevitability of corruption to any system, and argued that the only way to stay close to purity was through constantly reestablishing the myth as the center of your culture.

If the founding myth of Roma community is one of exiles in search of a land that doesn't actually exist, then their nomadic life style (which today, I will add, is more stereotype than truth) makes perfect sense. They defined themselves as a transient community in search of their new land, which has not been reached yet. To keep the identity of the community in tact, this myth, and life style, must be kept central.