"There are two well-defined Black races: one has a black skin and woolly hair; the other also has black skin, often exceptionally black, with straight hair, aquiline nose, thin lips, an acute cheekbone angle. We find a prototype of this race in India: the Dravidian. It is also known that certain Nubians likewise belong to the same Negro type...Thus, it is inexact, anti-scientific, to do anthropological research, encounter a Dravidian type, and then conclude that the Negro type is absent."

Dr Cheik Anta Diop.

To gain any understanding of the Indian presence within the walls of the Rastafari tradition, one will have to study the African presence in India. The British “indenture ship” program was very clever disguise of the re-invention of African slavery. After having declared it’s “emancipation of the African, England needed to fill it’s plantations in the West Indies, and what better place to find workers than in India, since they had already colonized India.

An Indian idren of Rastafari once said he couldn’t agitate for reparations, (by the way this idren didn’t come to the west thru the indenture program) since his people wasn’t taken in to slavery (he may be right). (I, however couldn’t say that of myself and countless other Rastafari idren of Indian descent) I would like to correct his statement, indentureship was slavery, and I say this because of the historical evidence that exist to support the fact. Indians having reached the Caribbean suffered the exact same situation as the African in the Caribbean. The British had to give the illegal “trade” some sort of humane sounding name, so as not to create any further disturbances in their “royal” halls of their parliament. And they couldn’t take them to the US because the colonies in the US were engaged in civil war and they had recently suffered major losses in revenue ever since the American independence revolution of the 1700’s

Now, given the nature of the white English people it would be safe to say that they didn’t bring any Indian aristocrats or high caste people. So, who did they actually bring to the West Indies? They brought the poorest of the poorest, they brought the “untouchables” or Dalit or Dravidians who were the black people of India.

Runoko Rashidi :

In Greater India, more than a thousand years before the foundations of Greece and Rome, proud and industrious Black men and women known as Dravidians erected a powerful civilization. We are referring here to the Indus Valley civilization- -India's earliest high-culture, with major cities spread out along the course of the Indus River. The Indus Valley civilization was at its height from about 2200 B.C.E. to 1700 B.C.E. This phase of its history is called the Harappan, the name being derived from Harappa, one of the earliest known Indus Valley cities.

The indentureship program began in 1838 (2 years after the African emancipation) and ended around 1917, within that time more than 1,000,000 Indians were brought to the Caribbean beginning in British Guyana, with some going to Jamaica, Trinidad and several other islands where England had their plantations.

So it will be safe to say that slavery was well into the 20th century

Runoko Rashadi:

“The Indus cities possessed multiple level houses enhanced by sophisticated wells, drainage systems and bathrooms with flushing toilets. A recognized scholar on the Indus Valley civilization, Dr. Walter Fairservis, states that the "Harappans cultivated cotton and perhaps rice, domesticated the chicken and may have invented the game of chess and one of the two great early sources of nonmuscle power: the windmill."

The decline and fall of the Indus Valley civilization has been linked to several factors, the most important of which were the increasingly frequent incursions of the White people known in history as Aryans--violent Indo-European tribes initially from central Eurasia and later Iran. Indeed, the name Iran means the "land of the Aryan."

The above quotation clearly shows the genius of the early black settlers of northern India, that is until the Aryan invasion, when the black people moved south.

Runoko Rashadi:

The term "Dravidian," however, encompasses both an ethnic group and a linguistic group. The ethnic group is characterized by straight to wavy hair textures, combined with Africoid physical features. (see intro at top of page)

Dr Cheik Anta Diop:

. It is also known that certain Nubians likewise belong to the same Negro type...Thus, it is inexact, anti-scientific, to do anthropological research, encounter a Dravidian type, and then conclude that the Negro type is absent."

Upon arrival in the Caribbean, the Indian met the African and was subject to the same conditions as mentioned earlier; close contact created and defined certain cultural aspects of Caribbean life. It is a well known fact that the land that housed the Pinnacle compound started by the Right Hon. Leonard Howell in Jamaica was given by an Indian….thus the arrival of the Indian into the teachings of Rastafari Traditions.

Indians in the Caribbean have been involved in the Rastafari tradition since its inception, it is a known fact that His Imperial Majesty’s visit to Trinidad on April 18th 1966, on His way out of the airport which is located in the Indian village of St. Helena (name taken from the docking port in South Africa) that Indians lined the roadway shouting “GOD COME”

IT IS ALSO A WELL DOCUMENTED AND KNOWN FACT MANY OF THE ANCIENTS OF THE NYAHBINGHI ANCIENT ORDER IS OF INDIAN/AFRICAN DECENT, SOME OF THEM STILL SIT UP IN THE ANCIENT COUNCIL IN JAMAICA TO THIS DAY.

Runoko Rashadi:

It is also important to note that in the kingdom of the Pandyas women seem to have enjoyed a high status. This is the exact opposite of the regions of India where the Whites ruled. In these lands of Aryan domination it is said that a woman was never independent. "When she is a child she belongs to her father. As an adult when she marries she belongs to her husband. If she outlives her husband she belongs to her sons."

In 1288 and again in 1293 the Venetian traveler Marco Polo visited the Pandyan kingdom and left a vivid description of the land and its people. Polo exclaimed that:

"The darkest man is here the most highly esteemed and considered better than the others who are not so dark. Let me add that in very truth these people portray and depict their gods and their idols black and their devils white as snow. For they say that God and all the saints are black and the devils are all white. That is why they portray them as I have described."

The White tribes that invaded India and disrupted Black civilization there are known as Aryans. The Aryans were not necessarily superior warriors to the Blacks but they were aggressive, developed sophisticated military technologies and glorified military virtues. After hundreds of years of intense martial conflict the Aryans succeeded in subjugating most of northern India. Throughout the vanquished territories a rigid, caste-segmented social order was established with the masses of conquered Blacks (called Shudras) essentially reduced to slaves to the Whites and imposed upon for service in any capacity required by their White conquerors. This vicious new world order was cold-bloodily racist, with the Whites on top, the mixed races in the middle, and the overwhelming majority of Black people on the very bottom. In fact, the Aryan term varna, denoting one's societal status and used interchangeably with caste, literally means color or complexion and reflects a prevalent racial hierarchy. Truly, India is still a racist country. White supremacist David Duke claimed "that his 1970's visit to India was a turning point in his views on the superiority of the White race."

The masses of conquered Black people, however, were regarded by the Whites as Untruth itself. The Whites claimed to have emerged from the mouth of God; the Blacks, on the other hand, were said to have emerged from the feet of God. This was the ugly reality for the Black masses in conquered India. It was written that:

"A Sudra [Black] who intentionally reviles twice-born men [Whites] by criminal abuse, or criminally assaults them with blows, shall be deprived of the limb with which he offends. If he has criminal intercourse with an Aryan woman, his organ shall be cut off, and all his property confiscated. If the woman has a protector, the Sudra shall be executed. If he listens intentionally to a recitation of the Veda [a traditional Hindu religious text], his tongue shall be cut out. If he commits them to memory his body shall be split in half."

Servitude to Whites became the basis of the lives of the Black people of India for generation after generation after generation. With the passage of time, this brutally harsh, color-oriented, racially-based caste system became the foundation of the religion that is now practiced throughout all India. This is the religion known as Hinduism.

This quote clearly shows that the oppression of Black Indians. So my Indian idren from India couldn’t be more wrong in his statement of Indians never endured slavery.

Runoko Rashadi:

The Dalit are demonstrating a rapidly expanding awareness of their African ancestry and their relationship to the struggle of Black people throughout the world. They seem particularly enamored of African-Americans. African-Americans, in general, seem almost idolized by the Dalit, and the Black Panther Party, in particular, is virtually revered. In April 1972, for example, the Dalit Panther Party was formed in Bombay, India. This organization takes its pride and inspiration directly from the Black Panther Party of the United States. This is a highly important development due to the fact that the Untouchables have historically been so systematically terrorized that many of them, even today, live in a perpetual state of extreme fear of their upper caste oppressors. This is especially evident in the villages. The formation of the Dalit Panthers and the corresponding philosophy that accompanies it signals a fundamental change in the annals of resistance, and Dalit Panther organizations have subsequently spread to other parts of India. In August 1972, the Dalit Panthers announced that the 25th anniversary of Indian independence would be celebrated as a day of mourning. In 1981, in Bangalore, India Dravidian journalist V.T. Rajshekar published the first issue of Dalit Voice--the major English journal of the Black Untouchables. In a 1987 publication entitled the African Presence in Early Asia, Rajshekar stated that:

"The African-Americans also must know that their liberation struggle cannot be complete as long as their own blood-brothers and sisters living in far off Asia are suffering. It is true that African-Americans are also suffering, but our people here today are where African-Americans were two hundred years ago.

African-American leaders can give our struggle tremendous support by bringing forth knowledge of the existence of such a huge chunk of Asian Blacks to the notice of both the American Black masses and the Black masses who dwell within the African continent itself."

Dr. Vulindlela Wobogo, another African-centric scholar, has observed that:

"Manifestations of the Buddha in Asia are Black with woolly hair. They all appear to be Egypto-Nubian priests who fled Egypt...The priests carried their spiritual knowledge but lost much of the scientific knowledge for obvious reasons. The well-known aspects of Buddhism and its companion, yoga, are all simply Egypto-Nubian priesthood practices, meditation, and...the belief that one could attain a god-like state if the soul was liberated from the body through knowledge and denial."

In a monumental two volume work entitled A Book of the Beginnings, originally published in 1881, Gerald Massey recorded that:

"It is not necessary to show that the first colonisers of India were Black, but it is certain that the Black Buddha of India was imaged in the Africoid type. In the Black [African] god, whether called Buddha or Sut-Nahsi, we have a datum. they carry in their color the proof of their origin. The people who first fashioned and worshipped the divine image in the Africoid mold of humanity must, according to all knowledge of human nature, have been Africans themselves. For the Blackness is not merely mystical, the features and the hair of Buddha belong to the Black race."

In the first volume of his massive text Anacalypsis, Godfrey Higgins wrote that:

"The religion of Buddha, of India, is well known to have been very ancient. In the most ancient temples scattered through Asia, where his worship is yet continued, he is found black as jet, with the flat face, thick lips and curly hair of the African."

It would be contempt to exclude the Indian in the Caribbean and here in America and Europe from the pages of the Rastafari story.

Ras Ravin-I