Wasted wealth

Temple treasure and indian economy

The hidden wealth of at least one lakh crore of rupees being dug out from the treasuries of Sri Padmanabhaswamy temple of Thiruvananthapuram tells a new story. It tells the story that the Hindu spiritual system had a practice of hiding wealth in the form of gold coins, ornaments, diamonds, pearls and so on in underground tunnels. This wealth had been there for centuries. It became a ‘Guptadhana,’ which had no social use or value.

One right wing columnist, in one of his articles, argues that this wealth was buried by the Travancore king Dhrama Raja underground in 1789 when he perceived a threat of plunder by Tipu Sultan who was about to invade the state. He also tells us that Tipu Sultan, however, did not invade Travancore state, yet the rulers of that dynasty kept the wealth underground safe since then. This is not the only temple where such wealth is buried but there are many such temples where wealth is kept underground unused for any public or private purpose for centuries.

Along with the discoveries at the Padmanabha temple, a spate of other reports like large amounts of money, gold and silver being found in Saibaba’s living castle at Puttaparti or the declared assets of over Rs 1,100 crore at Baba Ramdev’s ashram at Haridwar are shocking for many reasons. The value of Padmanabha temple treasures is estimated to be around five lakh crore rupees. That is five times higher than the annual budget of Andhra Pradesh. One foreign reporter valued it to be around 900 billon rupees.

The total assets of Saibaba’s Prashantha Nilayam is not assessed. Certainly it will be of several thousands of crores of rupees. The Tirupati temple of Andhra Pradesh has thousands of crores worth of gold and silver. There are many other temples and Hindu institutions that have millions of dollars worth properties remaining there without any proper public use. How is this wealth getting accumulated around these religious institutions?

Of course, one way is through donations being given by the rich ‘bhaktas’ of those temples and of the living babas. The other way is accumulation of illegal wealth around such institutions as they are out of the purview of legal checks. The main question is how do they use this wealth? For what purpose do they use it?
The very culture of hoarding wealth for decades and centuries certainly affects the development of a nation. The wealth stored at the Padmanabha temple is a good example of non-use of such huge resources for a such a long time. Just imagine if this wealth had been used to build industries in the country at a time when industrialisation was taking shape in rest of the world?

No utilitarian value  

In the medieval period, the Roman catholic church used to accumulate wealth like this. But the western Christian forces realised that such accumulation of wealth by the spiritual centres had no utilitarian value.

The Protestant rebellion against the Catholic church changed that culture of hoarding wealth in churches and the Protestant churches became centres of investment and social service. The growth of business and industry took place only when the churches got out of the culture of hoarding wealth in the name of God. The western capitalism developed from such investments and re-investments. 

 In Saibaba’s ashram, huge amount of currency notes were found lying in bundles. Obviously this was nothing but black money. What was it meant for? It was meant to be spent for pomp and luxuries. Satya Saibaba was known for his pompous life style. Should a divine life be luxurious? How much wealth does an unmarried spiritual person need? In day-to-day discourses these babas preach about saints who were said to have lived a simple and spiritually dedicated life. The norms set by Shirdi Saibaba were different from that of Satya Saibaba. Is it necessary for a saint to sit in a chair made of gold?

Historically hoarding of wealth by the spiritual centres did not allow indigenous capital to be developed. As a result the capitalist accumulation in India was so poor that hardly any industrial initiatives were taken up by the Hindu spiritual centres.

Those who argue that the Muslim plunder as cause for hoarding wealth underground must tell us why huge wealth was hoarded around the Hindu spiritual centres even before the Muslim rulers invaded India? Why was the Indian economic system so weak that it could not build enough military power to checkmate such invasions?

The main reason was hoarding wealth like this and never allowing it to be invested in the empowerment of people, army and development of infrastructure in the sub-continent.
This was enjoined with the caste culture, which did not allow the untouchables and the other lower castes to use the wealth that was accumulated around the Hindu spiritual centres. People’s labour power was accumulated around temples in the form of gold, silver and currency of the contemporary period but their right to use that wealth by the working people was curtailed through caste-cultural system.

This kind of hoarding of wealth has had serious implications to our science and industrial development as well. It is the duty of Indian economists to study the relationship between the hoarding of wealth and the underdevelopment that we suffered from over time.