Is Adivasi Divas the same as Janjatiya Gaurav Divas?

No. Adivasi Divas falls on 9 August and follows the United Nations observance, while Janjatiya Gaurav Divas falls on 15 November and was approved by the Union Cabinet in 2021.

Who created Adivasi Divas?

The United Nations General Assembly, in resolution 49/214 of 23 December 1994. It is often dated to 1992, but the UN's International Year of the World's Indigenous People was 1993 and the resolution setting the day came the year after that.

Why is Adivasi Divas on August 9?

Because 9 August is the anniversary of the first day of the first meeting of the UN Working Group on Indigenous Populations, held in Geneva in 1982. The Working Group itself recommended the date.

Adivasi Divas

Next celebratedMonday, August 9, 2027

Rajasthan and Jharkhand close their offices for India's Scheduled Tribes on the day the world marks Indigenous peoples, an anniversary that belongs to a 1982 meeting in Geneva.

See how to celebrate

Countdown to the day

--DAYS

--HRS

--MIN

--SEC

Last updated September 2, 2026 · by the Holiday Calendar TeamHave an update or spot an error?

YEARLY DATEAugust 9

OBSERVED INIndia

CATEGORYCulture

SUBCATEGORYIndigenous

ORIGIN

International Body Recognition

FOUNDING ENTITY

United Nations General Assembly

FIRST OBSERVED

1994

“9 August 1982: the first day the Working Group ever met.

HOW THE HOLIDAY CAME TO BE

The date belongs to the United Nations, not India.

The United Nations General Assembly set the date on 23 December 1994, in resolution 49/214 on the International Decade of the World's Indigenous People, deciding that the International Day should be observed every year during the Decade on 9 August. The Assembly took 9 August on the recommendation of its own Working Group on Indigenous Populations, because it is the anniversary of the first day of that group's first meeting, in Geneva in 1982. No separate Indian founding instrument for the day has been documented; India observes the international day.

Read UN Resolution 49/214via United Nations Digital Library

INTRO

India's Constitution has a different word for Adivasis

Search the English text of the Constitution of India for the word Adivasi and you will not find it. The official Ministry of Law and Justice edition, as it stood on 1 May 2024, uses Scheduled Tribes 107 times and Adivasi not once. Adivasi Divas is the day marked in India for those communities, under a name its founding document does not carry.

The date is not India's either. August 9 is a United Nations anniversary, and the meeting it marks was held in 1982.

That gap, between the word people use and the word the state writes down, is the day's real subject.

ORIGINS

Adivasi Divas history

INTRODUCTION

The word Adivasi is younger than the communities it names. It came largely out of a political movement that wanted to give India's various indigenous peoples one word to stand behind.

How a word of that kind reached a state holiday calendar, on a date fixed at the United Nations, takes three separate steps. Only the first of them happened in India.

CHAPTER 01

A word assembled in the 1930s

The term joins adi, meaning of earliest times or from the beginning, to vasi, meaning inhabitant or resident. The World Directory of Minorities and Indigenous Peoples dates the coinage to the 1930s.

The word's use is regional. IWGIA's annual chapter on India notes that the Scheduled Tribes are usually called Adivasis in central India.

CHAPTER 02

The date came from a working group

In 1982 a United Nations working group on indigenous populations met for the first time, in Geneva. In 1994 the General Assembly turned the first day of that meeting into an annual date, on the working group's own recommendation.

The wording is narrower than the day's reputation. Resolution 49/214 decides that the International Day shall be observed every year during the Decade on 9 August. That Decade ran out in 2004.

So the Assembly renewed it. Resolution 59/174 decided to continue observing the day every year during the Second Decade. The United Nations today describes it simply as observed on 9 August every year.

CHAPTER 03

How August 9 reached a state holiday list

No Indian founding instrument for the day has been documented. What India has instead is a run of state decisions, and the sharpest of them landed on 31 July 2020.

That day the Rajasthan government decided to make 9 August a public holiday across the whole state. Until then it had been an optional holiday only. Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot acted on a long-standing demand from tribal society's elected representatives.

Jharkhand keeps 9 August as a state holiday too. The Union government marks a different date: on 10 November 2021 the Union Cabinet approved 15 November as Janjatiya Gaurav Divas, the birth anniversary of Birsa Munda. The word in that day's name is janjatiya, not adivasi.

TIMELINE

Timeline

A working group meets in Geneva

The United Nations Working Group on Indigenous Populations held the first day of its first meeting on 9 August.

General Assembly fixes the date

Resolution 49/214 decided the International Day should be observed every year during the Decade on 9 August.

The observance is renewed

Resolution 59/174 decided to continue observing the day every year during the Second International Decade.

Rajasthan upgrades the holiday

The state government turned 9 August from an optional holiday into a public holiday across Rajasthan.

Union Cabinet sets a November day

The Union Cabinet approved 15 November as Janjatiya Gaurav Divas, the birth anniversary of Birsa Munda.

WHY THIS DAY MATTERS

Why Adivasi Divas Matters

LAW

Scheduled Tribe status is granted state by state, not nationally.

The Constitution's Article 342 lets the President specify tribes and tribal communities as Scheduled Tribes in relation to that State or union territory, not for the country as a whole. A community recognised on one side of a state border is not automatically recognised on the other.

STANDING

India voted for the Declaration, and said why

India voted in favour when the General Assembly adopted the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in 2007, in a recorded vote of 143 to 4 with 11 abstentions. Its representative told the Assembly that the Declaration did not define what constituted indigenous peoples, and that the right to self determination applied only to peoples under foreign domination.

LANGUAGE

Indigenous peoples speak most of the world's languages

The United Nations counts indigenous peoples as speakers of an overwhelming majority of the world's estimated 7,000 languages, and as representing 5,000 different cultures. At least 40 per cent of those 7,000 languages are at some level of endangerment, by the same assessment.

BY THE NUMBERS

Adivasi Divas by the Numbers

476M: Indigenous people worldwide, UN estimate
8.6%: Scheduled Tribe share of India's population, 2011
75: Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups in India
Over 26%: Scheduled Tribe share of Jharkhand's population
23.43 lakh: India's forest rights land titles, to 2023

GET INVOLVED

How to Observe Adivasi Divas

Follow the United Nations observance

The UN sets a theme each year, and in 2026 it was Honouring Indigenous Midwives: Safeguarding Life and Well-being. Because 9 August fell on a Sunday that year, the observance itself ran online on Monday 10 August.

VISIT

Visit the Birsa Munda memorial in Ranchi

Jharkhand holds its official two-day programme at the Bhagwan Birsa Munda Memorial Park. The site is the old Birsa Munda Central Jail, where the tribal leader died in captivity.

READ

Read the resolution that fixed the date

The General Assembly's own text is public and runs to only a few pages. It is where the 9 August decision is actually written down, rather than summarised.

LOOK

Look up India's own tribal affairs record

The Ministry of Tribal Affairs publishes an annual review through the Press Information Bureau. It sets out the year's schemes, budgets and population figures for Scheduled Tribes.

GET

Get the day's names right when you share it

The United Nations title is the International Day of the World's Indigenous Peoples. In India the same date goes by Vishwa Adivasi Diwas, World Tribal Day and World Indigenous Day.

Test your knowledge

How well do you know Adivasi Divas?

1 / 8

Which UN General Assembly resolution set 9 August as the International Day?

Answer

Not nationally. It is a state holiday in Jharkhand and, since 2020, a state-wide public holiday in Rajasthan, but no Government of India declaration of 9 August as a holiday has been documented.

COLOPHON

Sources

How we know what’s on this page. References, not endorsements.

13sources

9primary records

11independently dated

Primary records

United Nations General Assembly1994-12-23

A/RES/49/214, International Decade of the World's Indigenous People

The adopted resolution of 23 December 1994, whose eighth operative paragraph sets the International Day on 9 August every year during the Decade, and whose preamble records that the date is the anniversary of the first day of the Working Group's 1982 meeting.

View source

United Nations General Assembly2004-12-20

A/RES/59/174, Second International Decade of the World's Indigenous People

The 2004 resolution that proclaimed the Second Decade from 1 January 2005 and decided to continue observing the International Day every year during it.

View source

United Nations

Background: International Day of the World's Indigenous Peoples

The UN's own account of the day, giving the establishing resolution, the 1982 Geneva meeting behind the date, the 1993 International Year, and its global figures of 476 million indigenous people across 90 countries speaking most of the world's estimated 7,000 languages.

View source

United Nations Division for Inclusive Social Development2026

International Day of the World's Indigenous Peoples 2026

The 2026 observance page, carrying that year's theme on Indigenous midwives and the note that the event moved online to Monday 10 August because 9 August fell on a Sunday.

View source

United Nations2007-09-13

General Assembly adopts Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (GA/10612)

The UN's record of the 13 September 2007 vote, listing India among the 143 states in favour against four opposed, and reproducing India's explanation of position on definition and self determination.

View source

Ministry of Law and Justice, Government of India2024-05-01

The Constitution of India (As on 1st May, 2024)

The official text, source of Article 342's rule that the President specifies Scheduled Tribes in relation to a particular state, and of the term counts quoted here: Scheduled Tribes 107 times in the English text, Adivasi none.

View source

Press Information Bureau, Government of India2023-12

Year End Review 2023: Ministry of Tribal Affairs

The Ministry's own annual review, giving the Scheduled Tribe share of India's population at the 2011 census and the count of forest rights land titles distributed to 31 October 2023.

View source

Press Information Bureau, Government of India2021-03-18

Upliftment of Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups

A Ministry of Tribal Affairs release recording that 75 communities identified as Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups live across 18 states and the union territory of Andaman and Nicobar Islands.

View source

Prime Minister's Office, Government of India2021-11-10

Cabinet approves declaration of 15th November as Janjatiya Gaurav Divas

The Union Cabinet's own announcement of India's national tribal observance on Birsa Munda's birth anniversary, a different date from 9 August.

View source

Additional coverage

IWGIA2025

The Indigenous World 2025: India

The 39th edition of IWGIA's annual country review, recording that Scheduled Tribes are usually called Adivasis in central India, that Jharkhand keeps 9 August as a state holiday, and that the government increasingly uses the term Indigenous Populations in official notifications.

View source

Minority Rights Group

Adivasis in India, World Directory of Minorities and Indigenous Peoples

A reference profile giving the etymology of Adivasi from adi and vasi and dating its coinage to the 1930s, in a political movement to build a shared identity.

View source

Business Standard Hindi2020-08-01

Rajasthan: public holiday on 9 August for World Adivasi Day (published in Hindi)

A news report of the Rajasthan government's decision to declare a state-wide public holiday on 9 August, replacing the optional holiday that had applied until then, taken by Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot on a long-standing demand from tribal representatives.

View source

The Indian Tribal2024-08-07

Jharkhand Gears Up To Celebrate World Indigenous Peoples Day

Reporting that Jharkhand observes 9 August as a state holiday, that Scheduled Tribes are over 26 percent of the state's population, and that the official two-day function is held at the Bhagwan Birsa Munda Memorial Park, the former central jail where he died in captivity.

View source

Related holidays

MON

Aug 2026

Culture

International Day of The World’s Indigenous People

Honor the world's Indigenous People on International Day of The World’s Indigenous People - recognize their unique cultures and celebrate their uniqueness!

82Read

FRI

Sep 2026