Hoarded Wealth in India

Hoarded Wealth in India

Imagine if the wealth had been used to build industries when industrialization was taking shape in the world?

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?


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