From Kailasa to Ghaziabad: The strange world of DIY countries

India Today

A Ghaziabad man turned a bungalow into a fake embassy — complete with luxury cars, forged diplomatic plates, and passports from countries that don’t officially exist.

Transcript

00:00Gaziabad's Harshvadhan Jain ran an embassy, not for one, but for four fake nations, Westataka,

00:06Siborga, Laudania and Pulvia. Passports? Check. Diplomatic plates? Obviously. A bungalow

00:11doubling as an international consulate? You bet. Sounds wild? Wait till you meet the people

00:17who built fake countries and got away with it.

00:19First up, Kailasa. Made up by fugitive godman Nityanand, Kailasa claims to be the world's

00:24only Hindu nation without a physical address. No borders, no GPS pin. However,

00:29it has a flag, a website, a cabinet and self-proclaimed ambassadors worldwide.

00:35Since fleeing India in 2019, while facing rape and abduction charges, Nityanand has promoted

00:40Kailasa as a spiritual refuge for persecuted Hindus. They've issued their currency, hosted

00:45online summits and signed symbolic MOUs with small US towns, most of which later withdrew.

00:51Next, Sealand. It's not on most maps, but it does exist. Sort of. Sealand is a former

00:58British military fort in the North Sea built during World War II. In 1967, a man named Paddy

01:04Road Bates occupied it, declared independence and crowned himself Prince Roy. Since then,

01:09Sealand has claimed to be the world's smallest sovereign state, complete with its flag, constitution,

01:14currency and royal family. You can even buy titles online. Yes, you can legally become a

01:20lord of Sealand for about £40. Then there's Liberland, a micronation founded in 2015 by

01:26Czech politician Vit Elijka on a patch of disputed land between Croatia and Serbia. He claimed the

01:31area was no man's land and planted a flag, declaring the birth of the Free Republic of

01:36Liberland. They have drafted a constitution, designed a currency and even opened citizenship

01:41applications with over 700,000 people applying online. But here's the catch. Neither Croatia

01:47nor Serbia recognizes it. And finally, New Atlantis. In 1964, Lester Hemingway, brother of writer Ernst

01:54Hemingway, built a small raft off the coast of Jamaica and declared it an independent nation. He named

02:00it New Atlantis, wrote a constitution and said it would be a base for marine research. It was less than

02:06100,000 square feet, floated in international waters. However, the project sank, literally,

02:12in a storm. So maybe Harshwatan Jen wasn't that original. From Kailasa to Sealand to Liberland,

02:19people have been making up countries for years. Turns out, building a nation is easy. Getting

02:24the world to believe in it, not so much.

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