NEW DELHI: All Indians, including tribals, are indigenous to India and the World Indigenous People's Day, observed on August 9 every year, has no relevance for the country, the RSS-affiliate Akhil Bharatiya Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram said on Wednesday.
In a statement, the ashram's president Satyendra Singh said the UN's declaration to observe August 9 as the World Indigenous People's Day was meant to extend the rights and self-respect to "struggling" indigenous people of other continents and countries like America, Africa, Australia, New Zealand and Canada.
"So far as Bharat is concerned, this day has either no relevance or no direct connection as all people of our country are indigenous to this land and we are now free from the clutches of colonial forces," he said.
Singh said India had signed the UN declaration in 2007 expressing its view "in obvious terms" that all Bharatvasis (Indians) are indigenous people of India.
"Continents and countries like America, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, where the colonial forces are still in power, did not sign the declaration," he added.
"When we talk about indigenous people, Kalyan Ashram emphatically believes that all people of Bharat are indigenous people. We believe that the janjati (tribal) communities are part and parcel of our Sanatan society," Singh said.
"Though there are diversities in their lifestyle, language, dress, traditional practices, our cultural outlook of all Sanatan society is one and the same," he added.
Singh alleged that "some external forces" and Christian missionaries in India are hatching up "a large-scale conspiracy" to divide the society in the name of Indigenous People's Day.
"Unfortunately, some organisations working among janjati (tribal) communities have also started observing the day as 'Adivasi Diwas'. Youths are being motivated against the true spirit of the day and a sense of separatism is getting rooted among them," he said.