My Repatriation Time
by Ras Ceylon
Rastafari is a movement of liberation. We stand for equal rights and justice for all and advocate for revolutionary change in society today. One of the principles of Rasta that has always resonated with me in these many years of trodding Jah path is "Repatriation". While it originated as a righteous call for descendants of the MAAFA/holocaust of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade of African people to be returned home, all Rastafarians from every vine and fig tree has this desire to return to the roots. Ras in the Ethiopian language Amharic means "head" or "general" and Ceylon is the former name of Sri Lanka. I am Ras Ceylon and after being born and raised in California, I have just returned from living in the land of my namesake for most of 2012. For me, 2012 was my "Repatriation Time".
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Sri Lanka is a tropical island nation of 20 million people located south of India and is home away from home for me. With its strategic location in the Indian Ocean between Asia and Africa, Sri Lanka has been known throughout history as a place of beauty and spirituality. It was known as Serendib in old Arabic and that is where the word "serendipity" comes from. Walking through any village or town in Sri Lanka, one is bound to see a Buddhist Temple, a Hindu Kovil, a Muslim Mosque and a Christian Church all in the same community. Despite having such a rich history dating to antiquity and diverse spiritual traditions being prevalent, in recent years Sri Lanka has been most known for its "civil war.” My parents emigrated from there to Los Angeles in
the early 70s, just as the ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka was rearing its ugly head. I feel like I have to give some history
because this civil war was the longest in modern Asian history and has been critical to my understanding of the need for universal human rights for all human beings.
After 400+ years of European colonial occupation under the Portuguese, Dutch and then the British, deep seeded hostilities between the people of Sri Lanka began to emerge in a typical divide and rule phenomenon. The Tamil minority group who are mostly Hindu, experienced preferential treatment in the British colonial period and as soon as independence was gained in 1948, the mostly Buddhist Sinhala majority reacted with a typical reactionary ethnic nationalism and began to legally treat Tamils as second class citizens. While both Tamils and Sinhala people converted to Christianity during the colonial era, and there has always been a Muslim population in Sri Lanka, it was the hardline Buddhist political interests that created the conditions from which the infamous Tamil Tigers separatist movement
was born.
The Sri Lankan civil war was waged officially from 1983-2009, so every single time I have