zzombie;8895763 said:
a deeper analysis will find that the Hindu culture has had an immense, largely unacknowledged influence on Jamaican culture and the early stages of Rastafari.
...
Indian indentured servants ... brought to Jamaica the Hindu practices of ganja consumption for spiritual and medicinal purposes, mystical religious practices, and a vegetarian diet. Their greatest contribution was not culinary but in the realm of spirituality. Indians had astronomical influence on the early tenets of Rastafari.
The leading father of this movement that preached pride in one’s African ancestry, living close to nature, and self-sufficiency, Leonard Howell, borrowed many of the early tenets of the Rastafari movement from Indians.
The ital diet, a more disciplined form of vegetarianism, derives directly from the influence of indentured servants who were vegetarians continuing an ancient practice from India.
The use of ganja/marijuana for spiritual and medicinal purposes has influenced not just members of Rastafari but Jamaicans in the countryside who resided alongside Indians. Though it is true Africans utilized marijuana for the same purpose, Indians are responsible for its arrival in Jamaica. Ironically, the British were the main suppliers of marijuana to Indians in Jamaica before it was criminalized in 1938. Jamaicans of African descent observed Indians’ ceremonial use of the ‘herb’ and adopted the practices. Practitioners of Kumina, a West African tradition, also utilized marijuana to communicate with their ancestors.
Joseph Hibbert, another founding father of Rastafari, acknowledged the Hindu influence on Leonard Howell in an interview with Leonard Howell’s biographer Helene Lee. “After learning about the Hindu God incarnates Rama, Krishna and Buddha, Howell was convinced that every nation had their own God.” Leonard found his African god in the crowning of Emperor Selassie of Ethiopia.
http://thyblackman.com/2016/01/11/indian-influence-on-jamaican-culture-and-growth-of-rastafari/
