Nithyananda is a nutcase swami from India. His youtube videos are so stupid that you will be astonished that a person like this can exist and have a following of all nationalities, not just Indian.
He escaped India when the law started investigating him and he has purchased an island off Ecuador and calls it Kailasa a Hindu nation.
How is this going to play out?
My prediction is that the Colombian drug runners are going to rob him soon and and tear him limb for limb. He picked the wrong part of the planet to display his wealth.
I suppose there’s a slim chance he could convince the drug runners he’s more valuable as a steady source of relatively small but reliable payoffs instead of one massive payday. You know, get them to think about the long term cumulative value of years of protection money.
My prediction is that, the guru will scam some money out of gullible followers; he may even go so far as to create playtime ‘passports’ and other documents that no country will recognize as valid (including Ecuador if anyone tries to use them to enter the country). There’s a pretty small chance anyone actually moves to the island, but if they do then at some point Ecuador will probably need to remind them that Ecuador still considers the island part of their country, perhaps mentioning the particular political science definition of a State that includes the words “monopoly on violence”.
I agree. The only issue here is whether Ecuador is willing to assert its sovereignty over the island. I feel that’s a near certainty. And as soon as Ecuador chooses to do so, any pretense of Kailasan sovereignty will be swept aside.
I could declare my backyard an independent nation. But the United States would not recognize my declaration and would still consider my backyard to be part of the United States. And I’m going to lose in any conflict I have with the United States.
No, not from a sovereign standpoint. By buying a house in the US do you establish a separate country? The island is still part of Ecuador no matter who holds the deed to the land.
Yes. This sort of thing has happened a fair number of times before, and such “micronations” last pretty much only as long as the actual nation that claims the territory in question doesn’t care enough to step in and squash them.
Looking him up, I expect he’ll make enough of an irritant of himself that he’ll get squashed sooner rather than later.
Yup. ISIS was, for a period, a country carved out of portions of Iraq and Syria through brute force. They weren’t going to get UN recognition or anything, but for the people living within their borders, UN recognition wasn’t really a factor. They were effectively being governed by ISIS.
“You can’t be a real country unless you have a beer and an airline. It helps if you have some kind of a football team, or some nuclear weapons, but at the very least you need a beer.” - Frank Zappa
Then I suppose the next question is… did whoever he bought that island from sell him a bridge to get to it, too? Just curious to see if he might be in the market for one is all. Naturally, I’d love to help.