Indigenous lands in Bolivia 'leased' by fake Hindu nation

Followers of a fugitive Indian Hindu guru on a mission to establish his own state are doing deals to buy land across Latin America.

- Tiago Rogero

So far, they have offered hundreds of thousands of dollars for large areas in Ecuador, Paraguay and Bolivia.

Last year, a representative of the Baure Indigenous people in the Bolivian Amazon signed a "perpetual" contract leasing 60,000 hectares (148,260 acres) of their rainforest home for $108,000 (£81,910) a year.

A representative of the Cayubaba Indigenous people signed a similar contract, leasing 31,000 hectares of the Bolivian Amazon for $55,800.

In both cases, the beneficiary was the United States of Kailasa, which presented itself to the Indigenous peoples as a nation but is not recognised by any country or the UN.

The fictional nation was created by Nithyananda - a self-anointed "supreme pontiff of Hinduism" - in 2019, after he fled India while facing charges of abducting children for his ashram and raping a follower.

After failed attempts to buy land in Ecuador and Paraguay, and even an agreement with the US city of Newark - which was scrapped when officials realised Kailasa did not exist - the fake country looked to Bolivia.

Between September and November 2024, its representatives signed contracts with at least four Indigenous groups for the 1,000-year lease of their lands "with automatic and perpetual renewal". The deals were first reported in the Bolivian newspaper El Deber last month.