Holy treasure trove
by
AJ Philip |
The Sree Padmanabhaswamy temple is now the richest in India
NOBODY had imagined that the millennium-old Sree Padmanabhaswamy temple at Thiruvananthapuram in Kerala contained such a treasure trove when a seven-member committee was asked by the Supreme Court to make an inventory of all the precious articles in its safe vaults. As one of them — a retired judge — confessed in a television interview, they were simply dazzled by the sight, as they opened one strong room after another.
There were sacks of gold coins, Roman empire-era coins, emeralds and rubies, diamond-studded crowns, solid gold statues and breath-taking jewellery, some of which weighed several kilogrames. Finally when they reached the last strong room, they realised that opening it would irreparably damage the multi-layer lock system. When they sought the court’s direction, it cried a halt to the stock-taking till a whole lot of issues, the exercise had thrown up, were settled once and for all.
Whether the unopened vault contains more wealth, as many believe, or not, the fact is that the items discovered so far are valued at over $22 billion, making it the richest temple in the country. To get an answer to the question how the temple, where the presiding deity is Vishnu in his reclining posture, acquired so much wealth, one has to turn the pages of Kerala’s history.
Marthanda Varma was a ruler who hailed from a small principality called Venad in the 18th century. A brilliant military strategist, he conquered all the neighbouring principalities to form the state of Travancore, which extended from Kanyakumari, the southern tip of the Indian subcontinent, now in Tamil Nadu, to Aluva in the north. After the great conquest, he surrendered the whole state to Sree Padmanabhaswamy and ruled thereafter as the deity’s vassal. Travancore thus became “God’s own country”, an epithet the Kerala government has been using to market the state as a major tourist destination.
The king’s successors continued to honour the tradition instituted by him, with the result that the dividing line between the temple treasury and the state treasury often got blurred. The large collection of European gold coins found in the temple is attributed to the roaring pepper trade Travancore had with many European countries. Known as the ‘black gold’, pepper was in great demand in Europe. The Dutch have converted one of the pepper warehouses in the Amsterdam port area into a museum.
Unlike most other Indian princes who led a luxurious lifestyle, importing choice wines and automobiles like Rolls Royce, the Travancore rulers – both men and women – were known for their frugal lifestyle and progressive thinking. In a seminal article on female foeticide, Nobel-laureate Amartya Sen paid a rich compliment to them when he wrote, “Indeed, as early as 1817, Rani Gouri Parvathi Bai, the young queen of Travancore, issued clear instructions for public support of education: ‘The state should defray the entire cost of education of its people in order that there might be no backwardness in the spread of enlightenment among them, that by diffusion of education they might be better subjects and public servants and that the reputation of the State might be advanced thereby”.It is this policy, among others, that transformed Kerala into the most literate state in the country.
That the safe vaults of the temple remained unopened for more than a century bears proof that the rulers never touched the property. After India’s independence in 1947, formation of Kerala in 1956 and abolition of the special privileges the princes enjoyed in 1969, the Travancore rulers lost their claim on the temple.
It’s a measure of the people’s faith in them that they were allowed to manage this temple, though a state-controlled body was constituted to run all the big temples of Kerala. It was a lawyer’s fear that the temple property was being misused that forced him to approach the Kerala High Court that eventually led to the unprecedented stock-taking. His fears have been proved unfounded.
The temple never had any security worth the name. Now that its riches are known all over the world, the state government has been compelled to provide a three-tier, fool-proof security with sophisticated equipment for surveillance. Opinions on how the wealth should be handled differ from person to person. “It is the temple’s property and it should remain in the temple” says Chief Minister Oommen Chandy, who echoes the orthodox Hindu viewpoint. It is countered by those who argue that it should be used to set up world-class educational institutions. However, it is the Supreme Court which will take a final call.
Oman Tribune |
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