Why was not there an opposition to this strange concept (only one known to me is from religious parties who were better aware maybe due their non-feudal background)? And now comes the million dollar question, why do always present this conflict as a dichotomy between West-East , Urdu-Bangla, Punjabi-Bengali but do not discuss this as class conflict (no am not a Marxist but can’t ignore the elephant in the room!).

Isn’t that a fundamental difference between Pakistan and Bangladesh (India too!) that on one side power started devolving into masses (what with non-feudal leaders like Maulana Bhashani, Sheikh Mujib) while Punjab has been a laggard on this regard. The only self made leaders who have risen from bottom and did not have advantage of social/political/economic hierarchy are right-wing religious ones. Why isn’t there a progressive self made leader like elsewhere.
Hope to see some answers.

We did not disapear. We have done what we have always done. We hide in plain sight.

The first arrivals were brought by the Spanish in the late 1500s. Spain was unsuccessful in colonizing the Americas. They left many behind in the area that would be known as the Rowland/Orange/Person counties of North Carolina.

The second group would be brought here from the Netherlands and England. Some before the Puritans, New Amsterdam. For the next 75 boatloads of Roma from all over Europe would be used as labor and explorers. Who else to explore a new frontier than those who had 500 years of history being in a strange land surrounded by strange people?

The next wave of Roma would come from Scotland and Germany. The Scottish were often expelled Jacobites.

“Scots Banished to the Plantations” is an excellent source to see who was sent here and for what crime.

All of these different groups of Roma migrated into NE Eastern Kentucky, specifically Wolfe and Magoffin County. We stayed there from 1790 until about 1920.

The racial purity laws of that time made it very difficult. Starting around 1880, the people in north eastern Kentucky started traveling to Indiana, Ohio, and Illinois. They would then go through the mid west Arkansas, Missouri, and over to Colorado. They would go south to Florida over to Texas.

We would change our names from Roosa to Rose. Brandenburg to Brennan. Nickel to Nicholson. We’d change our first names from Elvira to Evelyn. Josephus to Jo.

We’d join Baptist churches. We’d start churches. We’d hide among the Freemasons. We’d become governors and lawyers. We’d start cults. We’d start homeless shelters.

We do all the things everyone else does. Some good. Some bad.

We’re people just like anyone else. We’re Jews, and Muslims, and Atheists, and Mormons. But on the inside we are Roma. Among friends we are Roma.

Some still travel to this day. Others haven’t traveled for hundreds of years.

But we didn’t go anywhere. We’re right here as we’ve always been. Hiding in plain sight.

Let’s focus on the line between speech, which I believe we’re all in favor of being unfettered, and acts, which we should all agree must be judged from a standpoint of moral equivalence. Is the prosecution of the Iraq War equivalent to the fatwa against Rushdie? It seems clear to me that the war was very much higher on the scale of immorality than the call for Rushdie’s murder. The fact that Amis or Remnick or Hitchens could see some equivalence between the two, and even consider the fatwa more reprehensible than the slaughter they supported, is the height of hypocrisy. This is not to suggest that Eagleton is right about Rushdie; he [Eagleton] had to eat his words after claiming that Rushdie had “a fondness for the Pentagon’s politics” regarding the Iraq War—an outright lie—so his opinions on Rushdie’s views of Islam are grain-of-salt worthy. Regardless, anyone has the right to despise Islam—or Catholicism or Mormonism—and to speak about it if he or she so desires; but no one has the right to slaughter people based on such views. Speech and act are not the same thing.

The great irony that you so brilliantly call to our attention is the fact that defenders of free speech should also be active supporters of state-sponsored murder. These people must be confronted about their hypocrisy whenever they open their mouths. Keep up the good work!