Indigenous People Day has no relevance: RSS leader
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New Delhi: RSS leader Satyendra Singh said on Wednesday that the World Indigenous People’s Day, observed on August 9, has no relevance in India. The chief of Akhil Bharatiya Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram (ABVKA), an affiliate of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, Singh, said that the day is irrelevant to India because Indians, including tribals, are indigenous to the country, PTI reported.
The Akhil Bharatiya Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram was meant to boost the rights and self-respect of the struggling indigenous people of America, Africa, Australia, New Zealand and Canada.
ABVKA is affiliated with RSS, the hardline Hindutva organisation parent of the political party BJP.
ABVKA chief Singh claimed that certain external forces and Christian missionaries are attempting to divide the society in the name of Indigenous People’s Day under a large-scale conspiracy.
“Unfortunately, some organisations working among the tribal communities have also started observing the day as ‘Adivasi Diwas’,” the leader alleged. Youths are being motivated against the true spirit of the day, and a sense of separatism is getting rooted among them.”
He claimed that since India was free of colonial forces, the day had no relevance here. Further, he said that since India had signed the United Nations declaration in 2007, India had expressed its view that all Indians are indigenous people of the country.
“When we talk about indigenous people, Kalyan Ashram emphatically believes that all Indians are indigenous people,” he said. “We believe that the tribal communities are part and parcel of our Sanatan society.”