You know about the $22 billion treasure in Trivandrum
. So I am not going to recap the story about how the erstwhile—Indian royal families are always ‘erstwhile’ no?—royal family of Travancore and the Shri Padmanabhaswamy temple accumulated pots of gold over centuries in the form of taxes, gifts and bribes.While the sheer volume of riches unearthed continue boggle minds and pop eyes, there is now a debate swirling up about what should be done with this astonishing wealth. Should the temple keep and treat it as personal wealth? Or should the government take it over and use it in some manner beneficial to the public? Trivandrum MP Shashi Tharoor wants to retain the treasure within the temple premises
.The pro-temple—or is it anti-state?—faction seem to be rallying around the idea that no one has the right to spend someone else’s money. That this is private property and should stay that way.
My views are irrelevant here.
(But since you ask: I am deeply saddened when religious institutions in one of the flagship “poor” countries of the world hoard so much wealth. $22 billion is an astonishing, game-changing amount of money that can be used to build sustainable institutions from scratch. Sure, the government is no white knight of fiscal transparency and prudence. But religious institutions are no safe havens either
.Maybe institutions should commit to spending a certain percentage of their wealth each year on social projects.
Wait. I know what some of you are thinking. Let me save you the speculation. I am a Hindu born , studied at a Roman Catholic school since by birth and graduated at sikh college, But my only god is Mark Knopfler. Yes, churches/mosques/temples hoard wealth too. Yes, I think they should give it away too. No, I can’t make them do it first before your temples or mosques have to. Relax. I am not the enemy.!
There is the history of the hoard. Which will take much telling. I vividly remember watching Gharwali films of the 1980's- 1990's that dealt with such hordes of treasure being found under temples, inside wells and in cemeteries. I loved those movies, even if some of them did often end up being slapstick, dash-for-the-cash comedies. Let us all sincerely hope this latest find does not.
Also this comes at a time when a number of period Gharwali movies seem to have revived interest in local history.
But what is depressing is how the debate from the very beginning is skewed heavily in favourite of status quo. And status quo, as we all know, is India’s favourite solution to problems. Now I don’t mean to say that doing nothing is always the sub-optimal solution. Sometimes, for instance if Ghulam Nabi Azad says something, it is best to act as if nothing happened and carry on.
Yet somehow I get the feeling that all sides of a debate prepare for it by practising the word ‘No’ many times in front of a mirror. The sum total of what I have read on blogs, tweet and in columns so far:
1. Should the government take over the treasure? No. The government is full of thieves. There was something about spectrum…
2. Should the treasure be used for the public? No. Why do you want to spend other people’s money? This is private property.
3. Should be allow the temple to do something with it? No. What if they steal it? Maybe they already are?
4. Surely we can put it in a museum? No. Remember Gandhi’s glasses? Definitely thieving will happen.
5. Maybe the government and temple can somehow use it to help the poor? No need. First you tell all the churches and mosques to give up their wealth.
So what do you do? Count it, videotape it, photograph it and put it back in a hole in the ground. And put policemen all around it all the time. But by no means do anything with it.
All of those arguments have merits of course. Our government steals with aplomb, it probably is private property, temples are not above the occasional pilferage, our museums suck, and yes everybody else has treasure in their chambers as well. Perhaps all this negativity is symbolic of the general moral malaise that the nation has been plunged into ever since, what, the Commonwealth Games. People have written about the paucity of genuine good news from India
.I fear that all this bad news has plunged us into a permanent “worst-case scenario” frame of my mind. We go into a debate or a problem assuming that everyone will behave in the worst possible way. I already assume that all horrible news about female feticide is true, all government data is false, everything BCCI does is bad for cricket, and any positive news coming from India has a heinous evil side which will reveal itself soon enough and embarrass us all. Like a negative dope test.
Maybe I am just over-thinking this, reading the wrong columns and swiping through the most cynical tweets. But now I find myself in a bitter, cynical place. And I dislike it very much.
Do you think there is room in that secure, quiet vault under the Shri Padmanabhaswamy temple for a perturbed blogger? It seems happier down there than up on the ground above.
