Rastafari: The Name and The Rasta Story - Part 1: Origins

This Article is part of a series written originally for "The Virtual Niahbingi", my first website and the first Rasta websitte on the newly developed internet .

Prior to that, this reasoning was part of a series of emails and bulletin board messages, most notably on the WBBBBS (The World's Biggest Bookstore Bulletin Board System) of Toronto. The cognoscenti will of course know that BBS's preceded the web as the medium of social interaction....

thought you might like to know too...

The Virtual Niahbingi evolved into IAHBINGI: the voice of the rastaman and that these names are my unique creations.

So if you see my work cropping up without my prints all over it.... please make a shout.

Spread the word.... plagiarism is theft.

Original Copyright 1989-1994

© Krishna Singh Reynolds

... remember that leadership does not mean domination.

The world is always well supplied with people who wish to rule and dominate others.
The true leader is a different sort. He seeks effective activity which has a truly benificient purpose.

HIM Haile Selassie I : On Leadership

Ras Tafari Makonnen is the pre-coronation title and name of the Emperor Haile Selassie I from which we proudly derive the name of our movement.

His Majesty's coronation and subsequent involvement in world affairs were predicted by Marcus Mosiah Garvey, the Jamaican civil rights leader whose impact on the worldwide Afrikan community is a matter of history.

Rastafari is a way of life that originates in the colonial history of Jamaica and it fuses political consciousness with religion to create a livity (or way of living and being).

In the next chapters, we will explore the conditions that motivated the rise of Rastafari nearly 80 years ago and how we have become the voice of the voiceless crying in the wilderness that is babilan (or the juggernaut of world government).

In the 1930's, most Jamaicans lived under conditions their grandparents and great grandparents would have known under slavery and apprenticeship ( its aftermath), with the exception that their descendants were nominally free. The continued propoganda campaign by the colonial establishment to instill a sense of unworthiness in the Afrikan and his descendants had raged unabated for over 300 years, because of the economic benefit that europeans derived from exploiting afrikan labour.

It was logical in that context, therefore, to clothe this exploitation in the guise of bringing the gospel of Christ to the heathens.

This period was a time of great ferment within colonial populations especially since many had left their native lands to serve in some function during the Great War as World War 1 was termed. This war repealed the mostly unwritten code among European colonial powers that allowed them to put on or otherwise pretend a united front against their colonial populations. The horror of the war, however , could not be contained. It was clear that Europeans were divided and thus the idea of the independence struggle was born .

In Jamaica and the larger West Indies, this took the form of labour unrest which was, in essence, the only form of political activism that was permissible. This drive to form trade unions and so gain workers rights, the basis of any pluralistic democratic society masked the seditious ideas of self determination.

The labour riots of 1938 in Jamaica would later bring this simmering sense of injustice to a head and would eventually lead to universal adult sufferage, or the right of the adult population to vote regardless of property ownership in 1944.

The Basis...
The Bible says in Genesis: "And God said; Let us make man in our own Image" This directly led to the then heretical idea of a black Christ and with other readings of the Bible inevitably led to the idea that Afrika was not the place of ignorance and insignificance they were taught that it was.

It therefore followed that its people could not be the degraded dregs of humanity that colonial society had brought to a better life, because of keen desire of the same colonial powers to raise fallen humanity to its full potential.

This is # 1 of a multipart series of articles on Rastafari. and is © 1989-2011 Krishna Singh Reynolds. All Rights Reserved.

You can catch upon the rest of the series at : http://zenkrishna.blogspot.com/2011/12/rastafari-name-and-rasta-story-part-2.html