New Delhi: The city of Newark in the United States found itself in a strange position a few weeks ago, when it realised it had signed a sister-city agreement with a fictional nation. The agreement with ‘Kailasa’ – the ‘Hindu nation’ fugitive godman Nithyananda claims he has founded – has now been scrapped.
“Based on deception, the (sister-city) ceremony was groundless and void,” Newark press secretary Susan Garofalo told IANS. “As soon as we learned about the circumstances surrounding Kailasa, the City of Newark immediately took action and rescinded the sister-city agreement on January 18.”
Despite this, however, the Kailasa website continues to highlight the agreement, going so far as to call it a “bilateral agreement with the United States of America”.
Kailasa was also in the news recently because two representatives of the so-called country attended an event organised by a UN committee in Geneva on February 24. One of them even spoke at the event. Vijayapriya Nithyananda, who has a tattoo of the godman on her arm, claimed that Kailasa has been implementing “ancient Hindu policies and indigenous solutions” for sustainable development in her so-called country. She also said that Nithyananda had been “persecuted by anti-Hindu elements” in India.
On Thursday, she issued a clarification on Twitter, saying that her statement “is being misinterpreted, wilfully manipulated, and distorted by certain anti-Hindu sections of the media”.
Tamil Nadu-native Nithyananda, whose real name is Rajashekharan, allegedly fled India in 2019 after security agencies began probing his involvement in criminal cases including a rape case in Karnataka. The case pertained to two girls who went missing from his ashram. His passport expired in September 2018 and police have since declined his requests for a renewal.
In December 2018, Gujarat Police arrested two of Nithyananda’s associates, and also booked him under charges of abduction, wrongful confinement, voluntarily causing hurt, intentional insult to provoke breach of peace and criminal intimidation under the Indian Penal Code as well as charges under the Child Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Act.
After fleeing the country, Nithyananda reappeared online to claim that he had founded his own nation.