The recent disclosures regarding findings of massive treasure in Thiruvananthapuram’s Shri Padmanabhaswamy temple, Sathya Sai Baba’s bedroom and Tirupati Balaji temple are instances of establishing these seats of religion as commercial institutions.

The treasure found is just mind boggling. Just imagine, Rs five lakh crore in Padmanabhaswamy temple, Rs 50 crore in Sathya Sai Baba’s bed room, Rs 42000 crore in Tirupati Balaji Temple and Rs 500 crore annual income being earned by Maata Vaishno Devi Shrine. All these examples depict these temples as the new avatar of religion in the 21st century.

In contrast, we’ve millions of people in India who do not get even a day’s meal. It’s sort of paradox. On the one hand our temples are overflowing with money and are getting Richie Rich, while on the other hand millions of people find it hard even to get their both ends meet. This certainly shows that there is something grossly wrong which needs immediate solution.

Exploiting the belief and devotion of the people to pile up treasure in temples doesn’t behove well for a large democratic country like India. While defining religion Saint Tulsidas had once said: “For a true saint, who preaches people about kindness, love and piety attraction to wealth is undesirable.”  In fact, in all religions of today there is seldom any importance given to wealth rather it is despised and felt ominous.

All religions say that accumulating wealth and food more than the requirement breeds greed. It makes people greedy taking away all the goodness from them.

Scriptures also say that once the greed takes over there is no end to it and it grows into a massive spider web taking into its fold our own purity, sanity and good thoughts. We gradually get away from the Almighty as our soul becomes sinned with our machinations and ill-doings.

In Hindu religion, emphasis has always been laid on sacrifice and renunciation. Examples are numerous. For instant the King Harischandra, Great Bestower King Bali, God Rama, Great Archer Arjun and others. All have been our ideals showing us the path of triumph by adopting virtues of honesty, dedication, sacrifice and perseverance. In fact Saint Dadhichi donated all his bones for the benefit of the society. Thus, in a country which has towering ideals, accumulation of huge treasure reflects on our own religion very poorly. In my view, if this wealth is utilized for ameliorating the sufferings of the needy and down trodden then definitely the problem of education and health could be resolved easily.

Going back to the annals of history, we would find that the accumulation of wealth and opulence in India’s temples started way back in the 11th and 12th centuries. This news of richness spread across the globe so much so that India was being called as the “Golden Bird.” The greed for getting hold of this wealth led to invasions by looters like Muhammad Ghori, Mahmood Ghazanavi, Taimurlang, etc. They invaded these temples and looted as much of wealth as they could. In fact, the same greed led to the entry of British Empire into India for the sake of trade which later resulted in usurpation of power and making India its colony.

Why I’m saying all this is because ‘greed’ is the main culprit and this props up from wealth. In India where a major chunk of the population sees itself being forced to go for sleep with empty stomach here, the so called political leaders and religious centres have accumulated large amount of treasure for their own benefit. However, there is one big difference. In the 21st century though we won’t see invaders but once the population is riddled with poverty and emaciated health and gets into revolution mode it would be really difficult to control people. In this situation maintaining law and order will be a difficult task for the political leaders and administrators. Time has come when the wealth piled up at temples is opened up for the welfare of the society and the people of India. The wealth donated to God should be used for the purpose of rituals and performing other spiritual needs. For this, the move should be made by the religions institutions themselves. Otherwise, time will come when the Government finding no other way out would intervene to get the accumulated treasure being used for peoples’ welfare.

It’s the centre’s intervention that today the Maata Vaishno Devi Shrine earns an annual income of Rs 500 crore in terms of donations and contributions being made by the devotees. It’s the efforts being made by the Vaishno Devi Shrine Trust that pilgrims get better facilities during their stay and worship at the shrine. Besides taking care of Dharamshalas, pilgrimage route and temple campus, the trust is also doing commendable works in the field of education and health. However, in my opinion the tax exemption given to religions centres should be removed to create greater transparency and honesty in finances of various religious trusts.

Rajesh Gupta

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