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Hello and thanks for downloading Witness history from the BBC World Service with me Claire Bowes.

Today we are going back to 1971 and the first ever World Romani Congress.

In Europe, Russia, the Americas and the Middle East,

they were known as gypsies and often suffered persecution and prejudice.

But they'd all come originally from India a

thousand years before and this was the first time they would meet as a people.

Grattin Puxen organised the Congress. For centuries the Roma were referred to as gypsies, mistakenly thought to have come from Egypt.

As with much about their lives, their origins were unknown.

It's not totally pinned down, but certainly Roma originated from Indian, probably Northern India, because we found later on that with the

Punjabi dialect about 60% of the words are the same as round many words.

They're thought to have fled northern India more than a thousand years ago, possibly driven out by war.

They travelled west and ended up settling in nearly every continent of the world, but mainly in Europe.

Gratt and Puxen grew up among English Roma in Essex in the 1950s, some of whom had given up the traditional

travelling life.

Half my gang, you know, when I was sort of 10, 11, 12 words you have says, but we didn't think of it in those terms at the time.

They were house dwelling gypsis.

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