- A Hindu religious sect tried to enter Ecuador, Paraguay and Bolivia by lying to authorities and Indigenous leaders.
- The self-proclaimed nation, the United States of Kailasa, operates from different parts of the world and offered high sums of money to Indigenous leaders in exchange for lands to exploit or conserve for carbon credit projects, say legal experts.
- One contract was a lease for 1,000 years, to be renewed perpetually, allowing the self-proclaimed nation to exploit the natural resources in the leased territory.
- Authorities announced the beginning of an investigation into land trafficking and criminal organization against the people involved in the contracts of the perpetual leasing of Bolivian land in favor of the self-proclaimed nation of Kailasa.
The United States of Kailasa maintains that it is a real nation. With this title, over the last three years, they have traveled to different countries in South America to look for productive lands where they can settle. They did so in Paraguay and Ecuador, and they recently arrived in Bolivia. There, 20 emissaries from Kailasa have been accused of trying to scam Indigenous leaders with whom they agreed on a “perpetual lease” of their lands.
Their intention was to become the owners of big territories in three Indigenous communities of the Bolivian Amazon: The Baure, the Cayubaba and the Esse Ejja. Their plans also included a protected area, according to the mayor of San Rafael, a town in eastern Bolivia. By the time this article was first published in March, the migration officials had already expelled the Kailasa representatives from the Bolivian territory.
This story starts in September 2024, when some members of the self-proclaimed nation of the United States of Kailasa arrived in Bolivia. The three emissaries who entered the country as tourists, holding Irish citizenship, as confirmed by the Bolivian migration office, had the objective of getting in touch with Indigenous leaders. They settled in the town of Exaltación, in the department of Beni, and from there they began contacting leaders from the Amazon to propose a “bilateral cooperation.”
The representatives of the Baure, Cayubaba and Esse Ejja peoples said that they were convinced by lies. Then, 17 more people arrived. This time, most of them were Indian or Chinese citizens, according to the migration office.
In Bolivia, the newspaper El Deber had access to documents that reveal how, in September 2024, Pedro Guasico Durán, one of the representatives of the Baure people, signed consent to grant the “perpetual lease” of 60,000 hectares (148,000 acres) of the territory for $108,000 per year.
The four names that appear in the agreement are those of the “Kailasa ambassador” Brenda Jung and delegates Nilesh Patel, Nithya Paramashivapriya and Trang Hyuen Tran. “This lease is for a period of a thousand years that will be renovated automatically and perpetually,” states the contract. It also allows Kailasa to exploit the natural resources in the leased territory.
In the same month, according to the minutes, Cayubaba people also shared that there was the signing of a “bilateral treaty” between Roddy Alberto Chávez Atoyay, representing the Cayubaba Indigenous people, and Kailasa to grant “a perpetual and irrevocable concession of 31,000 hectares [76,000 acres] of land” in favor of the United States of Kailasa, destined for the “conservation of endemic biodiversity,” in exchange for an annual payment of $55,800.
In the contract, the name Lewis Jeffrey Smith also appears as one of the delegates of this self-proclaimed nation.
Mongabay Latam spoke with Justo Molina, the president of the Confederation of Indigenous Peoples of the Bolivian East (CIDOB in Spanish), who said that these emissaries had already rented 20 houses in the Cayubaba territory.
“This fake nation looked for all the Indigenous peoples of the lowlands. We know they even looked for Indigenous leaders in the high plateau. They also looked for me. They said they wanted to sign agreements in favor of Indigenous peoples, but I found out that it was a fictitious country and that they had already tried their scams in Paraguay and Ecuador. Now, the brothers [leaders] who signed these contracts don’t want to be public about it; they are hidden,” Molina told Mongabay Latam.
The Cayubaba are a Bolivian ethnic community located in the town of Exaltación in the department of Beni. Here, the people grow plantain, cassava, rice, corn, pumpkin and sweet potato among other products. They also practice small-scale cattle ranching.
The third contract, celebrated in November 2024, involved the Esse Ejja from the Multiethnic Indigenous Territory (TIM II) between the departments of Pando and Beni. It included more than 390,000 hectares (963,000 acres) with a yearly payment of $28,107. Sanjinez Mamio Callaú, a leader, with other leaders as witnesses, signed this document. From Kailasa, “ambassador” Brenda Jung and delegates Lin Wang, Qiaohui Cui and Sophia Lorena Smith signed the agreement.
A fugitive in India?
The United States of Kailasa is not part of the United Nations and isn’t considered a nation as such. However, the self-proclaimed Hindu guru Nithyananda Paramashivam said publicly that he founded the United States of Kailasa in 2019. Where? An island that he bought from Ecuador, according to Paramashivam. That year, the Ecuadorian authorities denied that the guru was on their territory or that they had provided shelter to him.
Paramashivam is also a fugitive running from Indian authorities. According to Spanish newspaper El Mundo, he is being prosecuted for rape and sexual assault charges. A disciple of the religious leader accused him of rape in 2010. He was briefly arrested by the Indian police before being released on bail. In 2018, he was accused in court.
Days before he abandoned India, another report emerged claiming the kidnapping of children in his monastery, located in the western state of Gujarat. Nithyananda’s current location is unknown, but he appears in images of Kailasa’s social media platforms giving lectures.
In the meantime, Kailasa, on their website, says they have a flag, a constitution, a central bank, a passport and an emblem. They also say they have “two billion practicing Hindus” in their population. This fictional country even participated in two sessions of a U.N. committee in Geneva, Switzerland. The fact was qualified as “embarrassing” by member countries of the U.N. In Ecuador, they tried to sign agreements with the government, and in Paraguay, the head of the cabinet of the Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock signed a document of cooperation with Kailasa. After that, he was dismissed.
In Bolivia, Kailasa’s flags waved in the houses where they had settled in the town of Exaltación. The mayor of the town, Gonzalo Hurtado, told Mongabay Latam that he filed a report against the three members of Kailasa who had settled there. He said that the Irish citizens “intervened” in the Cayubaba Native Community Land and that he’s now facing threats for reporting them.
“Everything I did was to protect the land of the Cayubaba people. We knew that these [Kailasa] people were in town, but we didn’t know what they wanted. They arrived in September of last year, and they said they practiced yoga and wanted to protect the environment. In reality, they were striking deals with bad leaders, exchanging land for money. Now they are writing to me and calling me from the outside to threaten me,” Hurtado said.
Beni’s department prosecutor, Geraldo Balderas, told Mongabay Latam about the opening of an investigation for land trafficking and criminal organization against the people involved in the contracts of the perpetual leasing of Bolivian land in favor of the fictitious state of Kailasa.
One of the terms in all the agreements states that the representatives of Kailasa establish the validity of their own passports in the territories where they wanted to lease lands, but the Bolivian passport would also be valid. Locals also had to recognize Kailasa’s currency as valid.
The agreements state that the lease is irrevocable and includes all the rights over the air space and resources accessible on the soil or under it, and it’s renewable automatically every 1,000 years.
Mongabay Latam was able to speak with only one of the leaders who signed an agreement, Pedro Guasico from the Baure people. The leader said that they were “tricked” by the Kailasa members and that they are hoping to dissolve the agreement.
The director of the nonprofit Center for Legal Studies and Social Research (CEJIS in Spanish), Miguel Vargas, said that the arrival of Kailasa is a strategy to get carbon credits, that is, getting international funding for keeping sites intact. He referred to the people of Kailasa as “pirates of the carbon” and said that the only thing they want is to receive resources in exchange for forest conservation, but at the cost of dispossessing Indigenous peoples.
“The recent opening of Bolivia to the carbon market is the background for the surprising agreements between the representatives of the fake state of Kailasa and the Indigenous leaders of the lowlands,” Vargas said. He added that, in the agreements sent by Kailasa to Indigenous territories, the approach was to create areas to conserve the environment and the forest against deforestation and the development of extractive activities.
Jorge Vargas, the mayor of San Rafael, in the department of Santa Cruz, said that Kailasa members also contacted him in September 2024 to try to enter the San Rafael protected area to do business in the carbon market. “A woman was calling me insistently. I did some research about this supposed state and could see it was a scam. They wanted to enter the [San Rafael] protected area to trade carbon credits,” he said.
In Bolivia, a sentence from the Plurinational Constitutional Court allows the trade of carbon credits, contrary to what is laid out in Law No. 300, the Framework Law of Mother Earth. The court sentence, however, ranks higher than Bolivian law.
What the government says
The Bolivian government has talked about the case. First, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs denied having a diplomatic relationship with the “alleged nation United States of Kailasa,” which is not recognized as a state. Then, the director of the National Directorate of Migration, Katherine Calderón, who was in touch with Mongabay Latam, said that on March 24, 2025, 20 people linked to Kailasa were expelled from the country. This included 10 of Chinese origin and two of Indian origin, and the remaining from different nationalities.
“We’ve made effective the mandatory exit of these people belonging to that group, and they are no longer in the national territory. This sect has reached our country and tried to violate the good faith of our Indigenous population. Through an order, the Migration Directorate has intervened in this case in different locations of the country,” she said.
Calderón said that the members of Kailasa entered for touristic purposes in different locations and on different dates. They tried to get close to the Cayubaba population to settle on their lands and benefit from them, she said. In the first operation, three people of Irish origin were found on the Cayubaba territory and were taken from Exaltación to Trinidad city in Beni and then to Santa Cruz de la Sierra to be notified of their expulsion from Bolivia.
In a second operation in Santa Cruz de la Sierra, another 17 people of Chinese, Indian, Swedish, American, English, German and Portuguese nationalities were found in a house in the city center, and they were also expelled. This group had arrived in November 2024, according to Calderón.
The minister of Rural Development and Lands, Yamil Flores, said that articles 394 and 396 of the Bolivian Constitution establish that “foreigners can’t acquire state lands under any deed,” because “the state recognizes, protects and guarantees community or collective ownership. This includes campesino [farmer] communities, original intercultural communities, and the territory of Indigenous campesino people.”
“We don’t have a formal complaint, but the Ministry of Government Affairs, the prosecutor, and the National Institute of Agrarian Reform have already taken actions so that this crime can be punished,” said Flores.
Now, members of the United States of Kailasa are not sitting quietly on social media. The Facebook account for the “Supreme Pontiff of Hinduism, Bhagavan Sri Nityananda Paramasivam” posts hours-long live videos to talk about the “terrible conditions” they are facing in Bolivia.
For the followers of the Kailasa nation, what happened in Bolivia is akin to Hinduphobia, or anti-Hindu sentiment, and is part of a “racist attack” on their monks. They accuse the Bolivian state and the media of leading this attack.
Banner image: President Luis Arce received a gift from a member of the United States of Kailasa in Bolivia. It was in 2024 at the event for the anniversary of CIDOB in Santa Cruz. Image courtesy of El Deber.
This article was first published in Spanish on Mongabay Latam on March 31, 2025.
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