{"id":272820,"date":"2025-04-03T05:56:07","date_gmt":"2025-04-03T05:56:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2025\/04\/03\/the-country-was-fake-but-its-land-grab-in-bolivia-was-real\/"},"modified":"2025-04-03T05:56:08","modified_gmt":"2025-04-03T05:56:08","slug":"the-country-was-fake-but-its-land-grab-in-bolivia-was-real","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2025\/04\/03\/the-country-was-fake-but-its-land-grab-in-bolivia-was-real\/","title":{"rendered":"The Country Was Fake. But Its Land Grab in Bolivia Was Real."},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"text-align:center\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i1.wp.com\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2025\/04\/02\/world\/00int-india-guru\/00int-india-guru-facebookJumbo.jpg?ssl=1\" class=\"attachment-post-thumbnail size-post-thumbnail wp-post-image\" alt=\"The Country Was Fake. But Its Land Grab in Bolivia Was Real.\" title=\"The Country Was Fake. But Its Land Grab in Bolivia Was Real.\" \/><\/div><p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-0\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">They call themselves emissaries of the world\u2019s first \u201csovereign nation\u201d for Hindus, with its own passports and \u201ccosmic constitution.\u201d They claim to have created an official currency in sacred gold, managed by a \u201creserve bank.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Representatives of this nonexistent country have given statements at U.N. events and posed for photos with global statesmen, American congressmen and <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/us-news\/2023\/mar\/16\/newark-officials-duped-kailasa-nithyananda\" title=\"\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">the mayor of Newark<\/a>. Their leader, a fugitive holy man, professes to be able to guide the process of reincarnation, guaranteeing that billionaires who use his services won\u2019t be paupers in the next life.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">But the self-proclaimed United States of Kailasa has now collided with reality.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Last week, officials in Bolivia said they had arrested 20 people associated with Kailasa, accusing them of \u201cland trafficking\u201d after they negotiated 1,000-year leases with Indigenous groups for swathes of the Amazon.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">The agreements were declared void, and the Kailasans were deported \u2014 not to Kailasa, but to their actual home countries, among them India, the United States, Sweden and China.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-1\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cBolivia does not maintain diplomatic relations with the alleged nation \u2018United States of Kailasa,\u2019\u201d Bolivia\u2019s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement. Kailasa\u2019s \u201cpress office of the Holy See of Hinduism\u201d did not respond to requests for comment.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">The bizarre story of Kailasa stretches back at least to 2019, when the guru known as Swami Nithyananda \u2014 a.k.a. His Divine Holiness, the Supreme Pontiff of Hinduism \u2014 fled India after being accused of rape, torture and child abuse.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Born Arunachalam Rajasekaran in southern India, he became a Hindu monk and started his first ashram in his 20s near the tech hub of Bengaluru. He quickly built an empire across India and in cities around the world.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Nithyananda was also grandiose, linking himself to long religious and royal lineages. He claimed miracle powers, like helping the blind see through a \u201cthird eye\u201d or delaying the sunrise by 40 minutes.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cI am a totality of unknown in your life. I\u2019m the manifest of un-manifest,\u201d he said in one sermon. \u201cThe moment you sit in front of me, enlightenment starts.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-2\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">During a conversation in front of a large crowd, he endorsed the idea of \u201cthe world\u2019s first inter-life reincarnation trust management.\u201d Rich people like Bill Gates or Warren Buffett could invest a few billion dollars in a trust; Nithyananda said he possessed the knowledge system to ensure they got the money when they were reborn.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">That would be important, Nithyananda\u2019s interlocutor said, \u201cbecause it is possible Bill Gates will be born very poor, Warren Buffett may be born in some African village as a very poor guy.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">When the accusations of rape and sexual assault started piling up and the government went after Nithyananda, he claimed that the cases were an anti-Hindu conspiracy \u201cto grab my land.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">It is not clear where he went after fleeing India, but reports put him in South America or the Caribbean. A couple of years later, he resurfaced with the declaration that he had founded the United States of Kailasa, which he said was the revival of past Hindu kingdoms.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">The new nation\u2019s website \u2014 where \u201cfree e-citizenship\u201d is just a few clicks away \u2014 said its sovereign lands were \u201cin the Andean region.\u201d Nithyananda, who is now in his late 40s, was up front about the benefits the location offered.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-3\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cMany people asked me, \u2018Swami ji, why did you leave such a huge empire you built in India and are sitting in a corner?\u201d he says in a video, referring to himself using an Indian honorific. The answer, he said, was \u201cimmunity\u201d that made him \u201cnon-prosecutable\u201d as the head of his own state.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Since then, Kailasa had popped up now and again when its emissaries caused embarrassment for politicians around the world.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">In 2023, a senior official in Paraguay resigned after he had signed a memorandum of understanding with Kailasa. Earlier that year, the mayor of Newark, Ras Baraka, rescinded a sister cities agreement with the fictitious nation days after holding a ceremony announcing the partnership.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">In Bolivia, the Kailasa followers, who officials said had arrived on tourist visas, managed a photo with the country\u2019s president, Luis Arce. There is no evidence that Nithyananda joined them there.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Scandal erupted after an investigation by the Bolivian newspaper El Deber revealed the leases that the Kailasans had signed with Indigenous groups in the Amazon.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-4\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Pedro Guasico, a leader of the Baure, one of the groups, said its contact with the Kailasa emissaries had begun late last year, when they arrived offering help after forest fires.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">The conversations eventually turned to a lease of land three times the size of New Delhi, and the Baure agreed to a 25-year deal that would supposedly have paid them nearly $200,000 annually. But when the Kailasa representatives came back with a draft in English, it covered 1,000 years and included the use of air space and the extraction of natural resources.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Mr. Guasico said his group signed anyway. \u201cWe made the mistake of listening to them,\u201d he said by phone. \u201cThey offered us that money as an annual bonus for conserving and protecting our territory, but it was completely false.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2025\/04\/03\/world\/asia\/united-states-of-kailasa-bolivia.html\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>They call themselves emissaries of the world\u2019s first \u201csovereign nation\u201d for Hindus, with its own passports and \u201ccosmic constitution.\u201d They claim to have created an official currency in sacred gold, managed by a \u201creserve bank.\u201d Representatives of this nonexistent country have given statements at U.N. events and posed for photos with global statesmen, American congressmen [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":272821,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2025\/04\/02\/world\/00int-india-guru\/00int-india-guru-facebookJumbo.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[209634,72702,643,778,19122,52213,40940,3693,99405,2881,209635],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272820"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=272820"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272820\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":272822,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272820\/revisions\/272822"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/272821"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=272820"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=272820"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=272820"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}