What Are the United States of Kailasa?
The self-proclaimed Hindu religious leader Nithyananda Paramashivam claims to be the founder in 2019 of the United States of Kailasa. Kailasa is said to be located in Latin America, on an island near the Galapagos archipelago in Ecuador, according to a report by the BBC. Vistazo magazine in Ecuador also reported this fact and a quick search on the Internet with the phrase “Kailasha Island Charitable Organisation,” shows its location on Floreana Island. On their website they claim to have “108 NGOs recognized by the United Nations in 149 countries.”
Through off-the-record information, Indian government sources who prefer to remain anonymous, define this group as a “micro-nation that wants a country for members of the Hindu religion, excluding the vast majority of the population of Indian nationality, that is, it is a right-wing pro-fascist religious sect.”
According to the BBC, the religious leader Paramashivam has a precedent with the Indian justice system for accusations of rape and sexual assault in 2010 and 2018, as well as accusations for kidnapping and confining minors in his monastery in the state of Gujarat, west of the country. So far his whereabouts are unknown and the serious accusations against him have not been proven, but it is worth mentioning that in an article four years ago the organization talks about the creation of its own “bank” based on cryptocurrencies.
However, despite doubts about the existence of this “new nation,” its diplomatic representatives managed to participate in two official UN international events in 2023, drawing the attention of high-level members and participating member countries. At these meetings, the group called for a stop to the persecution of their guru and their nation. Later, on July 4, 2024, they managed to participate in a debate on the representation of women in decision-making systems, organized by the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), and days later they participated on a panel on sustainable development organized by the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR), added international news media.
These facts forced the UN to publicly state that they had ignored the statements made by the representatives of the fictitious country before two of its bodies in Geneva (Switzerland). In an interview with the BBC of London, a UN official assured that the participation of Kailasa’s representatives was “irrelevant” and “tangential” to the issues under discussion, according to the News Minute.
But, if it is a fictitious state, how did they register and participate in these events, which indigenous civil society organizations and collectives find so difficult to join when they seek to make recommendations to member states in the UN?
In addition to their presence at these events, they signed agreements with other countries. Thus, Kailasa turned to institutions in Paraguay where they met with Arnaldo Chamorro, former chief of staff of the Ministry of Agriculture, with whom they signed an agreement to establish diplomatic relations with Paraguay and to promote the recognition of Kailasa before the United Nations as an independent nation. This agreement was signed in November 2023. When this became known, Chamorro was removed from his position, although he mentioned that he was deceived by these people.
The News Minute, an Indian media outlet, also published several articles about Kailasa and its deceptions in Cameroon, Africa; Newark, New Jersey, in the United States; and Paraguay in Latin America. The government of Cameroon issued the following statement, published in this news outlet:
“La República de Camerún ha pedido a los ciudadanos de su país que ignoren la existencia del “estado ficticio” de los Estados Unidos de Kailasa, fundado por el autoproclamado dios Nithyananda, acusado de violación. El ministro de Finanzas de Camerún, Louis Paul Motaze, emitió un comunicado de prensa donde informó a la Agencia de Noticias de Camerún a raíz de la circulación de un documento falsificado titulado “Tratado bilateral para el reconocimiento de la soberanía de los Estados Unidos de Kailasa”, que según el ministro tiene como objetivo obligar a Camerún a “reconocer la existencia del Estado ficticio” y “aprobar la cesión de parcelas de terreno” en territorio nacional “por un importe de 3.500.000 euros”. Kailasa, como parte de sus esfuerzos por establecer su propia “legitimidad”, ha recurrido durante los últimos meses a hacer afirmaciones de reconocimiento internacional y “relaciones bilaterales” con varios países extranjeros, varias de las cuales han sido desacreditadas posteriormente. A principios de marzo, la ciudad de Newark en Nueva Jersey (Estados Unidos) descartó un acuerdo de ciudad hermana con Kailasa, afirmando que el acuerdo se había alcanzado basándose en el engaño y, por lo tanto, era “infundado y nulo”. “Tan pronto como nos enteramos de las circunstancias que rodearon a Kailasa, la ciudad de Newark inmediatamente tomó medidas y rescindió el acuerdo de ciudades hermanas el 18 de enero”, dijo más tarde la secretaria de prensa de Newark, Susan Garofalo. Nithyananda afirmó haber establecido la “nación hindú” de Kailasa en 2020, meses después de huir de la India mientras era investigado en relación con un presunto caso de abuso infantil en su ashram de Gujarat. El Tribunal de Sesiones de Karnataka también emitió una orden de arresto contra él sin derecho a fianza en relación con acusaciones de violación”.
The News Minute.https://www.thenewsminute.com/news/timeline-rise-fall-and-image-rehabilitation-rape-accused-godman-nithyananda-117086
Bilateral agreements with indigenous nations?
The religious group also sought a relationship with Ecuador. On March 1 of this year, a group of monks from the imaginary State of Kailasa managed to participate in the fourth session of the UN Environment Assembly held in Kenya, where they approached and held a dialogue with the Minister of Environment and Ecological Transition MAATE, Sade Fritschi, which the State of Kailasa itself disclosed in its official X account.
But this was not the first encounter of the Ecuadorian state with Kailasa. It turns out that this religious group settled in Ecuador in 2019. During Lenin Moreno’s government, they already pretended to enter the indigenous nationalities’ territories offering bilateral or conservation and cooperation agreements. The reason for this is that there is a great interest in positioning their imaginary state in the public opinion based on the Amazonian territory, taking advantage of indigenous nations’ large protected and continuous territories.
In this regard, it is worth mentioning a model agreement where Kailasa representatives clearly intended to force communities establish agreements for the recognition of their state, currency, religion, and their figurehead or guru, that is to say, their entire structure, as can be seen in the following draft agreement. The following images show the model agreement they have signed with organizations that prefer to remain anonymous, but which shows the clear intentions of this group in seeking legitimacy from the social movement and undertake cooperation with them with unclear objectives, thus generating many suspicions among the territorial leaders and concerned debate within the organizations.
This is just one example of the many attempted agreements that Kailasa has tried to sign since June with different Amazonian communities, following the same schemes and formats used with officials from Paraguay, Cameroon, and the United States. The following paragraph gives a clear account of their true intentions (sample translated to English, original in Spanish):
This is not the only agreement, there are more! They have directly reached out to several communities of different nationalities in the Amazon region, breaking main organizational structures.
Several days ago it was reported that in the months of June and July in Puyo, Pastaza, representatives of Kailasa managed to establish direct contact and hold meetings with Kichwa, Achuar, and Waorani nationalities of the Pastaza province. Furthermore, according to unofficial sources, an agreement has already been signed with one Kichwa community located deep in the rainforest, 35 minutes by air, in which 1,000 hectares of land would be concessioned in exchange for US$7,000 per hectare with an annual payment for 1,000 years. This same intention also exists with some Waorani communities. The strange thing is that there are private and public institutions such as notaries and legal consortiums endorsing affidavits for these types of fictitious agreements.
Several photographs in social networks show meetings between representatives of this fictitious state with grassroots community members, as well as several images that have been captured in different offices in the city of Puyo, between members of Kailasa and Amazonian communities, several of which claimed to have received them as a courtesy, given the unexpected visit. For security reasons and to protect their integrity, many of them have preferred not to be mentioned or exposed in this report or to disclose images of these meetings.
Several questions remain. Is this legal? Can Ecuadorian law validate or legitimize these intentions? Why is there silence from the Ecuadorian government representatives concerning these facts, which have already been denounced?
Is there complicity between the Ecuadorian government and this imaginary show? Why have they not issued an official governmental communiqué clearing up these facts? Moreover, how are these representatives able to gain access to the Minister, while on the other hand, indigenous representatives are branded as destabilizers of the state, amred terrorists, or even falsely linked to drug trafficking, for fighting for their collective rights and self-determination as native nationalities?
It seems that the proliferation of different cooperation organizations, mainly in the Ecuadorian Amazon region, have the population confused. In the absence of an organizational direction or control, groups such as the one above and the generalized interest in capturing international economic resources through the business of green funds or climate finance, generate conditions for a new wave of neo-colonization in the Amazon. Such is the clear example of Kailasa. If they are able to get away with their pretensions, it would imply an ingenious concession of our territorial rights and the disarticulation of our common unified struggle and defense of our territories. This would leave aside our own principles of Sumak Allpa, Sumak Kawsay, Sumak Ayllu and our own right to self-determination, since the needs imposed by capitalism on our communities continues unabated, such as the need for money to live. But we must not fall into desperation, nor reach agreements with organizations or groups without knowing if they have other more perverse interests.
Therefore, it is urgent that our organizations discuss this new reality and make decisions regarding all these external actors attempting to disarticulate us from our organizational processes and our communal way of life. It is also urgent to call on the Ecuadorian government to put a stop to this type of groups and their interests. Indigenous organizations should also raise their voices and denounce this kind of meddling by a religious group that is trying to establish itself in Ecuador.
The indigenous women of the Ecuadorian Amazon, mainly in the province of Pastaza, are alert to any event that threatens our territories and our communities. We are extremely concerned because we feel vulnerable to the pretensions of narco-politics, structural violence and extractivism, a dire situation to which we now must add this new neocolonial threat that is Kailasa.
