Holy Men, Fake News: The (False) Story of Kailaasa

Is a sovereign Hindu nation being established on an island next to Trinidad and Tobago, led by a suspicious religious head and on its way to being recognized by the United Nations? Most sane readers would not believe this, and yet when the Indian TV station The Republic shared a story about this at the beginning of December, the news hit the internet like a storm. Some other Indian news outlets promptly repeated the main “findings” of that article and India’s social media was full of buzz as well.

The story was suspicious from the very start and there is no need to consider its every detail. The author, Pooja Prasanna, began by telling us that a Hindu holyman, Swami Nithyananda, purchased an island from Ecuador with the purpose of turning its territory into a sovereign nation guided by the principles of the Hindu religion. One of the first “facts” given by the article was that the island was supposed to be located next to Trinidad and Tobago – a geographical fallacy given the nation’s distance from Ecuador.

Apart from such obvious mistakes, the story used exaggerations, forgeries, and misinterpretations. It referred to the website about Nithyananda’s religious community to claim that it has its own government, citizenship, passports, and so forth, and that it is in the process of petitioning the United Nations to formally recognize his new nation, Kailaasa. Both the mention of passports and the petition to the UN were cases of clear falsehoods. The purchase of the island was nowhere to be confirmed as well. The story reverberated so strongly, however, that the embassy of Ecuador was forced to issue a statement, saying that it “categorically denies […] that Nithyananda was given asylum by Ecuador or has been helped by the Government of Ecuador in purchasing any land or island in South America.”

While the religious group’s portal did speak of it as a “nation,” even a cursory reading revealed it was understood in the metaphorical sense of an international religious community. The Republic’s reporter also claimed that Nithyananda was already running his own government – but the community’s website revealed just a bare skeleton of an administrative structure, without any names of officials. The terms used by it could as well be understood as referring to future managers of a religious group, not the executive power of an independent nation.

The holyman is not running any cabinet, but he certainly is running – away from the law and his own country. Nithyananda stands accused of rape and is apparently avoiding being brought to court. His whereabouts remain unknown and he may be hiding somewhere in South America or hopping from one state to another. It must be stressed, therefore, that the text was note written as an attempt to dilute the charges raised against Nithyananda. Yet while the accusation of rape he is facing is a fact, the entire story about the island is not.

Why did such an absurd story spread so widely? While any conclusions regarding this are extremely hard to verify, I assume that the journalist skillfully tapped into certain imagery, into widely spread stereotypical visions of Hindu holy men. Or, to be more, precise: more than a few holy men have broken the law, indulged in heinous crimes, or attempted certain controversial actions that were widely reported in the press and influenced the general image of many other Hindu religious teachers. Thus The Republic found it easier to claim that Nithyananda did the same. Purchasing an island would fit well into the image of a godman running a community on its own, separated from the world, self-governed and self-sustained. OSHO tried the same in the United States, while Sant Rampal and Gurmeet Ram Raheem Singh did so in the Indian state of Haryana, though none of them tried establishing an independent nation. 

The Republic’s story also mentioned that a certain devotee by the name Maa (“Mother”) was running Nithyananda’s cabinet at his behest. There was, again, no confirmation about this anywhere, but the remark rings a bell, as a similar situation did take place in the case of OSHO. It looks like the Republic used elements from the stories of other godmen to make the story of Nithyananda look more genuine. Moreover, the political climate prevalent in India – the dominance of the Hindu nationalist party, the Bharatiya Janata Party, in particular – probably made many people more prone to react favorably to news of the establishment of a sovereign Hindu nation, however absurd the story sounded in this case. The fake news was then carried through social media and traditional media on the wings of confirmation bias. 

The Republic’s other trick was to deftly mix real information with its own fake facts in such a way that at first sight they seemed to be coming from the same source. The story claimed that the godman’s nation already had its symbols and passports. The article did copy real images of the community’s symbols (a flag and an emblem) from the religious group’s website, but added the fake designs of its passports next to them. The passport designs were nowhere to be found on the community’s portal and must have been forgeries. Lastly, as Nithyananda faces real accusations, it easy to add unreal ones to the story.