Reading: 'The Material Roots of Rastafarian Marijuana Symbolism'

(by Akeia A. Benard, 2007, History and Anthropology, 18:1, pp.89-99)

Short but interesting article on Jamaican history, tracing the beginnings of cannabis use. Apparently hemp was first introduced to Jamaica by Europeans who wanted to use it as a source of fibre (presumably for stuff like rope), but that idea fell through and it became an invasive weed. During the period where black Jamaicans were slaves, there's no evidence of anyone smoking it (it's possible that the type of hemp growing in Jamaica at this point didn't even contain high enough THC levels for it to be worth smoking anyway). (p.95)

Then slavery ended and black Jamaicans became officially free people. Understandably, they refused to go back to work for their former masters. From 1845 onwards, the white landowners responded by replacing them by shipping in indentured labourers from India.

Cannabis-smoking has a long history in India. The Rig-Veda (written earlier than 1000 BCE) describes 'ganja' or 'gaja' as a gift to humanity from the god Indra, who wanted humanity to “attain elevated states of consciousness, delight in worldly joy, and freedom from fear”. It was also used as a treatment for a very wide range of health problems. The Indian arrivals may have recognised the wild hemp, and probably brought their own varieties of marijuana with them too. Benard reckons that Rastafarian ideas about vegetarianism, each nation having its own God-King and the relationship between caste/class and colour may also have been heavily influenced by this contact with Hinduism (even though there were presumably also tensions between the black population and the Indian labourers who'd been brought in to take their jobs) (p.95).

However, when the practice of cannabis-smoking was transmitted from Hinduism to black Jamaicans, religious meanings were not immediately transmitted along with it. Initially, black Jamaicans used cannabis as a 'drug-food' (that is, as something that doesn't actually have any nutritional value, but is almost like a food because people need it in order to make it through the day. Nicotine and caffeine are common examples. Drug-foods are often good news for business-owners, because it means their employees can keep doing exhausting work for longer) (p.95-6).

Then in the 1930s, shifting economic conditions led to many black Jamaicans migrating to Kingston looking for work. However, when they got there they often found it very hard to find decent jobs. Many ended up squatting on government-owned property ('yards') and living off stuff they'd found in rubbish heaps. Some Kingston yards ended up forming 'camps': places where people (usually men) could buy, sell and smoke cannabis. These camps were also often places where people could hold 'sessions': meetings to discuss politics and religion (collectively referred to as 'reasoning'). It was out of these sessions that central tenets of Rastafarianism emerged (e.g. devotion to the contemporary Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie, aka Ras Tafari, and the idea that European society was the 'Babylon' described in Revelations) (p.92).

People who accepted this philosophy started making commitments to oppose Babylon (e.g. by refusing to take jobs in white-owned factories). The adoption of dreadlocks was a symbol of this commitment- since whites felt dreads looked disreputable, they were effectively a statement saying that you didn't care if you couldn't get hired for a factory job. This was also backed up by reference to the story of how Sampson lost his strength after Delilah tricked him and cut off his hair (p.93-4).

However, although cannabis was used during sessions, it was not initially seen as a religious object in and of itself. Benard argues that "when marijuana was criminalized in Jamaica in 1954 at the urging of the United States, it became necessary to make it a sacred form of resistance" (p.97, emphasis hers). She has a citation for this (Rastafari and other Afro-Carribbean worldviews, ed. B. Chevannes, p.84), so maybe she's onto something, but I would have liked to see her flesh out this idea a bit more- what does she mean by 'necessary'? As in, politically necessary, in the sense that calling it a 'religious' practice makes it harder to prosecute? (cf something like the debates over whether peyote should be illegal for secular use but legal for people who belong to specific religious organisations like the Native American Church). I have no idea if the act of calling cannabis a religious sacrament had any effect at all on how willing the Jamaican government was to prosecute users, though. Wikipedia says that the US and UK governments don't consider religious use of cannabis to be legal.

(Incidentally, from the same Wikipedia link, here's an interesting bit of legal logic:

"On January 2, 1991, at an international airport in his homeland of Guam, a US territory, Ras Iyah Ben Makahna (Benny Guerrero) was arrested for possession and importation of marijuana and seeds. He was charged with importation of a controlled substance. The case was heard by the US 9th Circuit Court November 2001, and in May 2002 the court had decided that the practice of Rastafari sanctions the smoking of marijuana, but nowhere does the religion sanction the importation of marijuana. Guerrero's lawyer Graham Boyd pointed out the court's ruling was "equivalent to saying wine is a necessary sacrament for some Christians but you have to grow your own grapes."")