Fugitive godman’s own country seeks recognition

Chennai: While the ‘super-cops’ in Ahemedabad and Bengaluru, besides a few other investigation agencies across the country, are hunting for him following complaints of rape, abduction, extortion and financial irregularities, the controversial godman Nithyananda has declared his own Hindu nation he calls ‘Kailaasa’.

Even more intriguing is that he has managed to reach his ‘Kailaasa’, said to be an island he had bought from Ecuador in South America, despite his (Indian) passport expiring and all those sleuths in multiple agencies looking out for him.

Reports suggest he could have sneaked out through Nepal.

And he is regularly, almost on a daily basis, posting videos of his discourses (satsang) on the social media from his ‘island nation’—some of those videos have the sea as the backdrop, giving the impression they were shot in ‘Kailaasa’ island off  Ecuador. The lectures are comic as well as tragic — funny because he speaks like a street fighter in urban slum Tamil and tragic because he constantly pokes fun at the government and the latter appears desperate to bring the fugitive to book.

Calling himself a ‘Paradesi’ and a ‘Poromboke’—two terms normally used in derisive and pejorative manner — Nithyananda in one of those satsangs claims he is supremely happy and peaceful despite all those attempts to harass him because he is “constantly protected by Paramashivan (Lord Shiva), Parashakti and Kalabairava”. “Why are you jealous of my job that’s gifted to me by Paramashivam? You too enjoy, if you wish”, is another piece of ‘divine’ rhetoric.

Yet another guffaw: “The saamiyaars (mendicants) need have no sense of shame and insult…and understand one thing, if despite all this (hunt by government agencies), I and my sangam (group) are doing fine, that’s because of Shiva’s protection”.

Kailaasa’s website, kailaasa.org, invites everyone to come in promising a “safe haven to all the world’s practising, aspiring or persecuted Hindus...where they can peacefully live and express their spirituality, arts, and culture free from denigration, interference and violence”.    

It claims to be a “nation without borders created by dispossessed Hindus from around the world who lost the right to practice Hinduism authentically in their own countries”. Obviously the fugitive godman is flaunting his own case as one of an honest Hindu being persecuted by the State.

The godman’s own country claims to have everything required for peaceful living — Cabinet of Ministers, a flag, treasury and even a passport. The ‘Hindu nation’ has English, Tamil and Sanskrit as official languages whereas Hindi would have no place. There could be some more similarly placed pieces of real estate he might have picked up over time and they all constitute Kailaasa with a population of 100 million Adi Shaivites and 2 billion practising Hindus and all of them would get free food, free education, free healthcare and the revival of temple-based lifestyle, says the website.

“As a stateless nation, it does not seek new territory but rather diplomatic recognition as the legitimate representative of the ideology of enlightened humanity. Kailaasa is bringing spiritual, religious, social, cultural, historic, economic and political legitimacy to Sanatana Hindu Dharma so that it may benefit all of humanity”, it says.

It proclaims as its ‘mission’ the sharing of its “science of enlightenment” with the rest of the world even while claiming that its followers “live in over 100 countries and form one of the most successful global communities”.

This godman’s ‘nation’ would be “similar to the Sovereign Order of Malta, a sovereign hospitalier-service nation which has diplomatic relations with 110 countries”. And that could mean that Nithyananda might soon send out applications to all those countries seeking recognition of his ‘Kailaasa’ as a nation, even as some reports have suggested that his ‘influential’ followers in the USA have already begun work in this direction.