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2011年7月5日星期二

Beneath a Temple in Southern India, a Treasure Trove of Staggering Riches

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The treasure trove, at the 16th century Sri Padmanabhaswamy temple, is widely believed to be the largest find of its kind in India, catching officials in the state of Kerala by surprise and forcing the government to send two dozen police officers to the previously unguarded shrine for round-the-clock security.

The discovery has also revived questions about who should manage the wealth, much of which is believed to have been deposited at the temple by the royal family of the princely state of Travancore, which acceded to India when the country became independent in 1947. Some of the vaults under the temple have not been opened for nearly 150 years, temple officials have said.

Temples in India often have rich endowments, mainly from donations of gold and cash by pilgrims and wealthy patrons, but the wealth discovered at Padmanabhaswamy dwarfs the known assets of every other Indian temple. Such assets are typically meant to be used by administrators to operate temples and provide services to the poor, but they have often become the subject of heated disputes and controversies.

India’s Supreme Court ordered the opening of the vaults at Padmanabhaswamy to assess the wealth of the temple after a local activist, T. P. Sundararajan, filed a case accusing administrators of mismanaging and poorly guarding the temple. Descendants of the royal family still control the trust that manages the temple, which is devoted to the Hindu god Vishnu.

Searchers have found bags of gold coins, diamonds and other jewels and solid-gold statues of gods and goddesses. On Monday, searchers started to unseal “Section B” of the vaults, a large space that was expected to reveal another sizable collection, said P. T. Chacko, the spokesman for the chief minister of Kerala, Oommen Chandy.

Mr. Chacko said Kerala would not seek control of the temple or its treasure, a step that some activists have recommended. “The treasure is donated to the temple from disciples and believers; it’s the property of the temple,” he said. “It has nothing to do with the state.”

India’s Supreme Court will decide what happens to the treasure and the rest of the temple, which sits in the heart of Kerala’s capital, Thiruvananthapuram, once it has established the total value of the holdings, which could take months to finish. Early estimates of the treasure have been raised several times as searchers have opened more of the vaults in recent days.

The economy of Kerala, a relatively prosperous Indian state, relies heavily on remittances from migrant workers in the Middle East and elsewhere. For many decades, it led the country in improving development indicators like literacy and infant mortality.


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2011年5月9日星期一

India court stays Ayodhya ruling

 9 May 2011 Last updated at 04:16 ET  The Babri Mosque was torn down by Hindu zealots in 1992 India's Supreme Court has suspended a ruling over the fate of the Ayodhya holy site, where Hindu zealots destroyed a mosque in 1992.


Last December the Allahabad High Court said the land should be divided and that the razed 16th Century Babri Masjid should not be rebuilt.


Hindu and Muslim groups appealed against that verdict, which the court on Monday described as "strange".


This case was launched well before 1992 and centres around who owns the land.


But the destruction of the mosque sparked off some of the worst communal violence in recent Indian history - nearly 2,000 people died in subsequent religious riots across the country.


In December's ruling the Allahabad court said that the site should be split, with the Muslim community getting control of a third, Hindus gaining control of another third and the remainder going to a minority Hindu sect, Nirmohi Akhara, which was one of the early groups to pursue a share of the land in the case.


On Monday, the Supreme Court put the judgement on hold, saying it was "strange". It also said that the division of the disputed land has "opened a litany of litigation".


Hindus claim the site of the Babri Masjid is the birthplace of their deity, Ram, and want to build a temple there.


Muslim groups have argued that the Allahabad court's ruling appeared to be based not on evidence but on the professed beliefs of Hindus.