February 4542High level talks underway between RNP and HNPReliable sources have confirmed that "serious negotiations" are taking place between officials from the Rajutti National Party and the Hosian National Party, with a view towards possible political co-operation during and after the next election. For a long time now, significant factions in both parties have been pressing for a rapprochement, both in order to tackle long-running tensions between Hosians and Gerajans, and also to unite the country around pressing Malivia's claim to sovereignty over Selucia.
Furthermore, in a conciliatory gesture towards the Hosian community, Prime Minister Amish Padagavakar has promised there will be no attempt to build a Gerajan temple on the site of the demolished Matthias the Baptist Church in Serediki. He has also announced that a small Hosian chapel will be permitted to be constructed nearby, although not on the actual contested site.
Top Gerajan leader sacked over Malivy Islands bookSwami Daya DongerkerrySwami Daya Dongerkerry has been sacked from his position as a member of Geraja's elite Swami Council for his role in writing a foreword for a book called
Critical Perspectives on the Malivy Islands Controversy, a collection of essays expressing a range of different views about the Malivy Islands, not all of which adhere to the currently popular view that the Malivy Islands (aka Selucia) rightly belong to Malivia.
In his foreword, Swami Dongerkerry laments the "stifling politicisation going on in Geraja today", a thinly-veiled criticism of Gerajans associated with the Rajutti National Party, and describes "the political agenda to stir up trouble with Selucia" as "aggressive, dangerous and profoundly un-Gerajan". He adds that "in my personal analysis, as a scholar of the Gerajan scriptures" the Malivy Islands described in the Gerajan religious texts "are almost certainly set in what is now Selucia" but that "this is a genre of literature which is more about story-telling with a spiritual purpose rather than about strict historicity".
Some of the essays in the book are even more inflammatory to Gerajan nationalists. Dasra Nan claims the Malivy Islands are submerged under the ocean off the coast of eastern Vascania. Priyanshi Banahatti argues the Malivy Islands are the Darnussian islands of Narikaton, Nihaton and Clenon. Prem Vaknis writes that the Malivy Islands used to be just off the coast of eastern Malivia, but that they attained such a state of advanced spiritual consciousness that they transcended the physical plane in which the rest of Terra is set and have transported themselves to another dimension, but will re-materialise in their former location twenty years before the universe approaches the end of its current karmic cycle in approximately two and a half million years time. Anushree Haldar thinks the Malivy Islands consist of Keymon and several other islands which used to surround Keymon but have now sunken into the sea. Vinod Deshmukh believes the Malivy Islands "are entirely fictional and have never existed in the real world". Shalini Thakre says the Malivy Islands "are a place on another planet which we go to if we do good deeds in our lives here in Terra".
Swami Periplectomenus LivigenusSwami Dongerkerry has been replaced on the Swami Council by Swami Periplectomenus Livigenus, a Selucian immigrant and follower of Selucian paganism who has come to believe that Selucian paganism is really a branch of Geraja. The Gerajan establishment has been making vigorous efforts to appeal to Selucian pagans for some time, trying to persuade them that they are in fact both Gerajans and Malivians.
Yogi Viswamitra Nandi flees HulstriaYogi Viswamitra NandiMalivia's renowned Yogi Viswamitra Nandi, notorious for claiming homosexuality can be cured through a mixture of intense yoga exercises and drinking one's own urine, has announced he is closing down his ashram in Umi-Basi, Hulstria, and is returning to Malivia. In a statement, he said he "loves Hulstria" and has "met some lovely, lovely people here" but that "the social, political and legal environment engendered by the
Homosexual Supremacist government is becoming increasingly hostile and is making it impossible for us to continue to operate". Later on, he told journalists that he will continue to "heal" homosexual clients in Hulstria from Malivia through long-distance meditation sessions and online yoga classes.