Nithyananda (born Arunachalam Rajasekaran;[a] 1 January 1978), is an Indian "godman"[2] (a charismatic religious figure who claims to perform the miraculous).

A number of mainstream news outlets, inside and outside India,[3][2][4][5][6][7][8][9] and a TV documentary series on Disney+[10] have referred to the organisation as a cult, its leader as a conman,[11][4][12] and his micronation of Kailaasa a scam;[3][12] his organization has denied any wrongdoing.

[12] Following charges of rape and abduction filed in Indian courts, Nithyananda fled India and has remained in hiding since 2019.

[16] In 2020, he announced the founding of his own self-proclaimed island nation called Kailaasa,[17][18] though some evidence suggests he had been promoting the idea for around 20 years.

[28][29][disputed – discuss] In February 2013, the title of Mahamandaleshwar was conferred on Nithyananda in a closed ceremony by the Panchayati Mahanirvani Akhara.

[36] Nithyananda has made several pseudoscientific claims, including that he delayed the sunrise for 40 minutes, that he could make cattle speak in Tamil and Sanskrit, and that he could disprove the correctness of the mass-energy equivalence formula E = mc2.

[37][38][39][40][41][42][43] He has claimed to have discovered over 400 siddhis, or paranormal abilities, expressible by humans and alleges having initiated his disciples into 60 such powers[44] including kundalini and third-eye awakening.

[50] Nithyananda has also claimed that he and his followers were able to perform activities like extrasensory perception,[51][52][53] materialisation, body scanning,[46] increasing height,[54] and remote viewing, and that they had the ability to find lost objects.

In 2010, Sun TV telecast video recordings that claimed to show Nithyananda and an actress Ranjitha (who was one of his followers) in a bedroom.

[75][76][77] In affidavits filed in the Gujarat High Court from various locations in the Americas, two of the missing children, who were by that time adults, rejected their father's claim that they have been detained forcibly.

[78] In a joint live video statement, the two girls further claimed that their father had plotted the abduction controversy after his name cropped up in an embezzlement case.

[89] The French government also has been seeking Nithyananda's whereabouts since 2019, to answer for fraud charges brought by a former devotee in France who claimed he was cheated by the guru out of an amount around US$400,000.