If you are calling me 'Greta of India', you are not covering my story, says 8-year-old climate activist Licypriya Kangujam

Image: Licypriya Kangujam/Twitter

Meet Licypriya Kangujam: the eight-year-old climate activist from Manipur who is fighting to save the planet and the future of young children like her.

For obvious reasons, her journey and her story might sound familiar. Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg's objectives are similar, but that is Kangujam's point: that their aims might be the same, but their journeys are different.

In a Twitter thread on January 26, Kangujam urged the media to stop calling her the "Greta of India".

"I am not doing my activism to looks like Greta Thunberg. Yes, she is one of our Inspiration & great influencer. We have common goal but I have my own identity, story (sic)," Kangujam wrote, adding that she began her movement in July 2018, before Greta's movement started.

"I first raised my voice to world leaders in Mongolia in an UN event in July 4, 2018. Since then I started my movement called 'Child Movement'. In Hindi, we called it 'Bachpan Andolan' to call our world leaders to take immediate climate action (sic)," Kangujam wrote.

Kangujam had spoken at the COP25 climate conference in December last year, and has already spoken in over 21 countries over the issue of climate change, urging global leaders to "act now" on the issue.

The young activist said since she felt that her work was "more important than the organisation", she had less publicity and media coverage.

"Only media came to notice me when I spend a week in front of the Parliament House of India on July 21, 2019. Before that also, I began my Parliament Movement since Feb. 2, 2019 (sic)," Kangujam said, adding that she even dropped out of her school in February 2019 to protest "every week in front of the Parliament of India".

"I sacrificed so much of my life in this tender age is not to called me 'Greta of India' (sic)," the eight-year-old wrote on Twitter, adding that if she is called the 'Greta of India', "you are not covering my story. You are deleting a story".

Kangujam's thread on Twitter has received over 2,000 retweets and more than 13,000 'likes'. The young activist had shot to limelight after Spainsh newspapers began calling her the 'Greta' of the Global South.

According to her father, KK Singh, who accompanied her to Spain, several requests to the government to help her with funding have fallen on deaf ears.