It was a moment that will feature in television archives and history books for years to come, just as Neville Chamberlain’s proclamation in September 1938 of “Peace in our Time” following his Munich meeting with Hitler has done.
The much-jowled Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, addresses an audience in the Indian capital New Delhi during the G20 summit in early March. He is probably under the assumption that the attendees are sympathetic. India has, after all, refused to denounce Russia’s murderous invasion and destruction of its smaller neighbour.
He opens his remarks with this gem: “The war, which we are trying to stop, was launched against us using the Ukraine”.
But instead of the applause, he’s met with cackles of sarcastic laughter.
It will go down as a classic of this era of post-truth where black is white and up is down. Where everything is first obfuscated and then embellished to such an extent that the end result bears little resemblance to the original.
But at least, Mr Lavrov is globally acknowledged as the Foreign Minister of Russia – a governmental position of an actual nation.
The same can’t be said about ‘Vijayapriya Nithyananda’, the woman who made headlines last week after claiming to be the “Permanent Representative to the UN” of the “United States of Kailasa”, a position and a place that only exists in the mind of the accused rapist and child kidnapper Arunachalam Rajasekaran, A.K.A. Nithyananda, the perma-grinning founder of the Hindu cult Kailasa.
Nithyananda’s well-oiled social media machine went into overdrive after Vijayapriya – not her real name, as all adherents of ‘Kailasa’ are required to take on a nom-de-guerre which reflects the collectivistic nature this most quintessential of cults – attended two UN committee meetings in Geneva in late February.
The cult’s Twitter feed was flooded with photographs of the quite sizeable delegation – led by Vijayapriya and which included Kailasa’s ‘ambassadors’ from around the world.
The event was organised by the UN’s Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women and open to anyone interested. You could literally walk in and take part.
However, Vijayapriya requested and was given permission to raise a question. She promptly introduced herself as “permanent representative of the United States of Kailasa to the UN”, a position that exists only in the mind Nithyananda and his ardent adherents.
Vijayapriya used the moment, not to discuss discrimination against women but to claim that her Dear Leader, Nithyananda, was being “persecuted” in India, the favoured defence of high-profile figures facing serious charges of rape and child abduction.
The UN promptly said it would ignore the statements, calling them “irrelevant”.
As the news of her appearance spread, Vijaypriya – a striking-looking woman reminiscent of female characters from ancient Hindu epics and who sports a gigantic full-colour tattoo of Nithyananda on her right arm – released a video ‘clarifying’ her comments.
She claimed that she had been “misinterpreted, wilfully manipulated and distorted by anti-Hindu sections of the media”. She also claimed that her comments were not an attack on the Indian government and appealed to the Indian authorities to take “decisive action” to crack down on those very same elements who she claims were “inciting violence” against the “supreme pontiff” of Hinduism, Nithyananda.
Curiously – and unsurprisingly – she didn’t offer any clarification about her claims to be a ‘UN ambassador’ for a non-existent ‘nation’, one which its founder claims to have the power of issuing passports, which has its own central bank, ‘ambassadors’ to actual nations like Mexico and New Zealand and, most importantly of all, a national seal.
It is a glimpse into the bizarre world of Nithyananda and the countless thousands who pay obeisance to him – a world where Hindu Dharma, and all the good that that entails, co-exists with obfuscation, embellishment, half-truths and corruption and the evil that all those things engender.
And it all appears to be very well funded and carefully choreographed to paint Nithyananda – the self-styled ‘Supreme Pontiff of Hinduism’ (SPH) – in the most flattering light and gain a sense of legitimacy for his organization in the face of serious and horrific accusations of rape, child abduction, coercive control and extortion.
Take for instance, a post in the news section of the Kailasa website on 3 March 2023.
The post has the headline: ‘UN Releases Tenth KAILASA Report on Persecution of SPH and Contributions to Reviving Hindu Sciences of Power Manifestation, Indigenous Education and Temple Science’.
A word salad on an unprecedented scale, and one which continues: “The United Nations has published the tenth report in the series of reports accepting, recognizing and bringing out the persecution on as well as the contributions of the Supreme Pontiff of Hinduism (SPH) Jagat Guru Mahasannidhanam (JGM) His Divine Holiness (HDH) Bhagavan Sri Nithyananda Paramashivam and KAILASA – the revival of the ancient, enlightened Hindu civilizational nation.”
The post then provides a link to a page of the United Nations Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner (OHCHR), which calls for “submission of written contributions for the elaboration of a study on the situation of the violations and abuses of human rights rooted in harmful practices related to accusations of witchcraft and ritual attacks, as well as stigmatization”.
This is followed by another link under the heading ‘Link to UN report’.
When you click on the link to read this report purportedly put together by the United Nations, it downloads a Microsoft Word document that outlines the various ‘achievements’ of SPH and outlines the innumerable ways that the ‘deep state’ and the ‘deep-state controlled media’ have ‘persecuted’ SPH.
An accompanying brief makes several claims which can only be described as a bit ‘out there’.
‘The SPH is the leader of 2 billion Hindus and the reigning spiritual emperor of 19 ancient traditional indigenous Hindu kingdoms. The persecution has been ongoing over a decade including over 70 assassination attempts, over 250 sexual assaults on the SPH and AIAT (Aboriginal Indigenous Agricultural Tribes) members, lawfare of 120 false cases, massive hate propaganda in electronic media of over 17,000 hours and print media of over 25,000 articles, destruction of heritage properties worth over 27 billion USD, and the Hindu Holocaust – continuing ethnocide and genocide of over 80 million Hindus worldwide since 7 centuries that faces the double-pain of an outright denial by the main stream narratives prevalent worldwide’.
It’s an extraordinarily harrowing account but throws out one interesting question: why is it that a man who claims to have the mindboggling power to “pause the sunrise” can’t be bothered to just dismiss this “lawfare” or turn up in India to respond to the allegations against him in a court of law.
At the very least, he could just perpetually delay the sunrise so that no one turns up for work at the court.
As for the OHCHR, a cursory search on its website and document archive provides not a single a mention of Nithyananda or Kailasa.
Another post, dated 11 January 2023, proudly exclaims that ‘The United States of America signs bilateral agreement with the United States of Kailasa’.
The post continues breathlessly: ‘The United States of America recognizes the United States of KAILASA and signs a bilateral agreement. Under the auspices of the Supreme Pontiff of Hinduism (The SPH) Bhagavan Nithyananda Paramashivam the United States of KAILASA and the City of Newark, New Jersey, USA, entered into a protocol bilateral agreement. The agreement marks a significant step forward in the mutual efforts to combat the cascading effects of the pandemic, complex mental health issues, violence, poverty, illiteracy and climate change through mutual cooperation for the upliftment of all people ultimately contributing to conflict free living and the cause of world peace.’
The post also features numerous photographs featuring Vijayapriya posing with a couple of men in suits.
To put matters into context, Brexit Britain – the world’s 6th, 7th or 8th largest economy, depending on the economist one consults – has been struggling to finalize a bilateral trade deal with the richest country in the world.
And yet, here we have a country that doesn’t even exist, signing bilateral deals with the US.
Alas, just when you think that Rishi Sunak should employ Kailasa’s trade negotiators, it turns out that the ‘bilateral agreement’ is actually with the city of Newark, New Jersey under something called the Sister Cities Initiative, which promotes peace and erm brotherhood between global cities?
The suits clearly didn’t appreciate the fact that brotherhood and peace cannot be underpinned by duplicity.
Days after the big announcement of SPH, Newark rescinded the whole thing.
The city government, in a statement said: “As soon as we learned about the circumstances surrounding Kailasa, the City of Newark immediately took action and rescinded the Sister City agreement. Based on deception, the ceremony was groundless and void.”
This is, one would imagine, a huge disappointment for Kailasa which already claims to have “bilateral agreements” with a number of cities on the West Coast of the United States.
However, one must assume that the agreements are about as substantive as Nithyananda’s claim to be able to teach cows to talk in Sanskrit.
It is all rather bizarre and would be quite funny if it wasn’t for the fact that all these manoeuvrings are done in the name of a man and an organization accused of committing the most horrific crimes; who is accused of tearing families apart and brainwashing young children.
It’s a campaign taken up by his representatives around the world, including here in the UK. In October 2022, Kailasa’s representatives in the UK were invited to a glamorous Diwali party at the House of Lords, sponsored by two leading lights in the Conservative Party – Bob Blackman MP and Lord Rami Ranger.
Cue a massive photo dump and PR splurge on Kailasa and Nithyananda’s various Facebook and Twitter feeds proclaiming how this fictional ‘paradise’ for persecuted Hindus had been feted by the “UK House of Lords”.
For many – from the Newark councillors to the Tory grandees – it may come across as a ‘bit of fun’ at best or irrelevant at worst; a deranged demagogue trying desperately to find a semblance of legitimacy.
However, for his victims the suffering remains very real.
Nithyananda has denied all the accusations against him yet refuses to return to India to face Indian justice. It’s variously been reported that he is hiding out wherever from Papua New Guinea to Ecuador – paradises for sure but of the earthly variety that offers convenient shelter for fugitives from justice.
Over the coming weeks, The UKAsian will publish a series of interviews with victims of Nithyananda.
Time to pause the sunrise, maybe?
