Aussies are furious after Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi delivered an anti-Australian indigenous land acknowledgment at a controversial event in Melbourne.
Mr Modi performed the welcome to country-style statement in front of a mainly Indian immigrant crowd of 30,000 at Marvel Stadium on Saturday afternoon while Australian Prime Minister Anthony looked on and clapped.
Mr Albanese and Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan both praised the foreign leader and gushed about mass immigration from India during the Melbourne Meets Modi event, which also sparked protests from Australian patriots, Sikh separatists and human rights activists.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi performs an anti-Australian land acknowledgement at an event in Melbourne today.pic.twitter.com/hz6ckKaf2y
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“I would like to begin by acknowledging the traditional owners of the land on which we meet,” Mr Modi said at the beginning of his speech.
“And I pay my respects to their elders, past, present and emerging.”
The land acknowledgment has since been criticised by everyday Australians on social media, with many pointing out that minority groups often defend mass immigration by claiming that Australia belongs to indigenous people instead of the European settlers who built it and their descendants.
Activist Hugo Lennon, who organised one of the anti-Modi protests, said declarations like the Indian leader’s “erode Australian sovereignty by framing Europeans as guests, and aboriginals as the owners”.
“Think about the message that sends, India’s Prime Minister welcoming Australians to their own country,” he said.
“Because that’s what a ‘welcome to country’ represents. It frames Australians as guests on their own land, and aboriginals as the true owners. And it is a poweful weapon against Australian sovereignty.
“They do this to justify the invasion of their people. If you ever talk to one of these Indians, they always say, ‘It’s not your land; it’s Aboriginal land’. So, to him, saying a ‘welcome to country’ means White people can’t complain about Indians flooding the country because it isn’t their land,” read another popular social media post.
“This is why ‘indigenous’ rights have always been another tool to demoralise and displace Whites. We have to acknowledge the White man stole the land on which we’re on. But infinity Indians everywhere, turning everywhere into India – that’s progress and diversity!” said another.
On Thursday Mr Modi and Mr Albanese also agreed to voluntarily return human remains and “items of cultural significance” held in both Australian and Indian museums.
Mr Modi’s land acknowledgment comes after a Sikh immigrant Labor MP last year claimed that Indians and South Asians in general are more Australian than White people because some aboriginals share some of their DNA.
Header image: Left, Mr Modi making his comments. Right, Mr Albanese reacting (Narendra Modi – YouTube).
