$22 Billion In Gold, Diamonds, Jewels Found In Indian Temple

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2011/07/05/137627235/some-22-billion-in-gold-diamonds-jewels-found-in-indian-temple

by niyazpk • 15 years ago

64 36 15 years ago

Am I the only one who had flashes of being a little kid watching Indiana Jones pop into his head after reading this?

It would be nice if they could use the gold for something beneficial to the people of the area (improve roads or schools or something), but its naive of me to think they can easily sell this stuff. Maybe loan the treasures to museums for a fee?

sorbus• 15 years ago

You are definitely not the only one (although I never watched Indiana Jones; pop culture osmosis is an amazing thing).

The article did mention that a lot of the historic pieces are probably going to end up in museums, depending on the outcome of the discussion about who should control the riches. It would not surprise me if a small amount of it is sold at auction, either to museums or private collectors. Renting them out or loaning them to museums would be a much better outcome, though - I hate to hear about works of art that are held in private collections, and not even sporadically publicly viewable.

jasim• 15 years ago

It is a very contentious issue: the wealth belongs to the Temple trust which is controlled by the erstwhile Royal family. Also, the Government has no say on it since it was donated to the Temple by private entities even before the govt. was formed.

Even if the court decides that the control of the wealth should go to the government, there is going to be huge contention since the donations were religious in nature, and has such strong connotation.

localhost3000• 15 years ago

It belongs in a museum!

vacri• 15 years ago

They have top men working on it.

trevelyan• 15 years ago

What was briefly yours is now mine....

hsmyers• 15 years ago

Current reports (see BBC online) mention amounts in the 100s of millions, not billions. That said the latest today was that they had to stop when they forced a door only to find an all iron door just behind it. They are taking a break so that the local supreme court and other authorities can talk things over (most likely preliminary division of the spoils?)

sateesh• 15 years ago

A small correction, you should be telling 'local court' not 'local supreme court'. Supreme court is the highest court of law in India and this opening of vaults of temple is being supervised by the Supreme court.

zeteo2• 15 years ago

>$22 billion [...] is likely a conservative estimate [...] the panel is simple counting and weighing the valuables. "Their value, including antique value, is not being assessed"

A quick back of the envelope calculation indicates $22 billion corresponding to 450 metric tons of gold. This is an immense quantity: India's current gold reserve is about 615 tons [1], and there were recent years when it dropped under 400. I will take this report with a grain of salt until it receives very strong confirmation.

[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_reserve#Officially_reporte...

brianbreslin2• 15 years ago

The find includes gems too, diamonds, etc. So those push up the value immensely, and command a higher value per kg than gold (I'm assuming).

zeteo2• 15 years ago

The article mentions gold coins and gold statues encrusted with gems, and that they're estimating the value by weight only. Since the encrusted gems can't be weighed separately, and furthermore the value of a precious stone strongly depends on quality not just weight, the estimate can only be based on the weight of the precious metal, IMO.

xtacy• 15 years ago

Also, the valuation might be higher due to its historical value.

Shenglong• 15 years ago

Keep in mind that a 3 carat red diamond is worth about $20,000,000... as an example I'm not sure what the geology is around there, or what India's historical gem cutting practices were... but I wouldn't say this is impossible.

Maybe... haha, this sixth door is the key to the world ending in 2012 :P

clobber• 15 years ago

Really? Source? Diamonds are a controlled artificial market and aren't worth squat. http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2524/is-a-diamonds-...

hacjjjjjjjj• 15 years ago

India had thousands of such temples for example, Somanatha etc. from which Arabs, Mughals and the crazy British took from it. When British came to India, india was the richest country and when they left India, India was the poorest country. Whites people have bad culture.

harichinnan• 15 years ago

I'm an Indian and a hindu. I've been to that temple. It's really sad to think that there would thousands of people around that temple who would go hungry as we speak and this temple has wealth that will pretty much stay locked up for the rest of humanity. It'll never get invested. No next google would come from thiruvanandapuram because of this. People would go on their lives living in terrible houses, driving terrible vehicles on atrocious roads. And Hindu fanatics would organize protests at the first mention of using this for any practical purpose.

tejaswiy3• 15 years ago

Considering local government corruption, I'd actually be happy if it wasn't used for 'practical' purposes if the government gets to control all this wealth.

abhaga• 15 years ago

I doubt it is the lack of money which is the primary cause of the state of our society. No amount of money can bring out a society from the corruption & mismanagement. By all means, let us use part of the treasure for public good (I say part since I assume the historical/antique value for majority of it). But unless we manage to fix our system, we will be back to broken roads and shabby houses very soon.

quasi• 15 years ago

It's about feeding a man vs. teaching him to find his food. All the collected wealth will vanish if we use it to feed people. People/Communities/Governments have to learn to build wealth and not live off it. Some part of this can go into making the land a better place but I think the most important use of it is to make the people proud and want to live better and build more wealth (hence standard of living). A large part of this treasure should be proudly displayed in a fantastic Museum.

demallien2• 15 years ago

Putting aside your extremely dubious claim that India was the richest country before the arrival of the British, I still fail to see why you think "White culture" is so terrible. Want to know how a small country like England managed to subjugate a huge country like India? Instead of stealing riches from it's people, to store it in a temple, leaving the people to live on uneducated poverty, the English instead were investing in infrastructure - roads, railway, schools, courts, police. The thing is, all of those investments made England a better place to live for in, if you were just an average person. What did India do during that time? When you figure out the answer to that question, come back and tell us how Indias culture was so superior to "White" culture.

tejaswiy3• 15 years ago

Both the comments are equally naive I believe. There is no way you can logically justify English colonialism was on the whole a beneficial experience for India and you'd have to come up with a much better explanation to justify that. You need to look only as far as the middle ages to see new religions being created and Indian trade / influence extending all over south-east asia. (Seriously, even now, I walk into a Thai restaurant today and I'm amazed how similar the deities are)

While I totally disagree with the term "superior" culture (honestly, Beethoven, Bach, Da Vinci, Roman empire? No way.), I'd also urge you to look up India's art, music and general lifestyle before the British invasion, and it's not as if we were tribals living off of hunting and gathering either.

And as to your second comment about "stealing riches from its people", it's called taxing, and every kingdom levies taxes and stores them _somewhere_. In this case it happened to be a temple. If anything, it speaks to the prosperity of a kingdom that they could afford to even spend so much on art.

gautamc• 15 years ago

What's it got to do with people being white? Long before the existence of the east India company Pusyamitra Sunga did more than his bit to undo all that Ashoka did to create a united India. While the British did not rule India for the sake of Indians, haven't individuals like Sir Arthur Thomas Cotton helped in creating a modern/self-reliant and Scientific India? Indians Blaming the mughals/Brit rulers is like blaming Google for indexing your mysqldump backup (with plain text passwords) after storing it in public_html/

SingAlong• 15 years ago

The last time I checked India's debt is $310+ billion. A lot of this treasure would be ornaments, which would seem repeated if kept in museums. They might as well auction this off to pay debt. Handing such massive wealth to people will only result in it's disappearance :P

fakeer• 15 years ago

Better demolish the bloody temple and errect sth meaningful there.

Cherian• 15 years ago

Feels adventurous to live in the vicinity of this temple :-). A bit like watching Indiana Jones.

tejaswiy3• 15 years ago

What do you make of the whole tug of war on who gets to control the wealth?

andrewflnr• 15 years ago

So these vaults haven't been opened in over a century, and the only reason they're being opened now is because someone is concerned with how a trust fund is managing them? Excuse me, managing how? I guess that's the question, but it still makes me laugh.

blutonium• 15 years ago

The Wiki article uses "security" instead of "management". If I were a judge and someone told me $22B in treasure wasn't behind miles of lasers, I might take some judicial liberties too.

train_robber• 15 years ago

Incredible to think that I used to walk around this place almost every other day while I was in school.

On another note; the kings of the old Travancore (who built this temple) were known for living a very austere life compared to the other Maharajas. They did invest in a lot of infrastructure during their time; mostly during the last half of the 19th century and early 20th century. There was an urban legend in my city (according to my grandmother) that in the event of an emergency the kings of Travancore had enough wealth to pull back the country out of it. This probably was it. I wouldn't really blame the kings for storing this under the vaults; it was intended to be used for famines and such; it wasn't as if they enjoyed any of this. The complicated history of Travancore is probably the reason why it stayed hidden for so long.

What happens to this now is the big question. There's going to be a big argument amongst the secularists, the spiritualists, the archaeologists and finally the government regarding this.

Atleast it made my city famous :)

sagarun• 15 years ago

History of the temple https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Padmanabhaswa...

arihant• 15 years ago

This is just from one of the two vaults unopened in like 150 years, and its still in progress. They still do not have full permission to do inventory on second untouched vault.

If I was the royal family, I'd buy Facebook.

notlion• 15 years ago

I really resent the way that the dollar amount is cited rather than the historical, cultural, and spiritual value. It's totally awe inspiring nonetheless!

mattiask• 15 years ago

Am I the only one freaked out by this passage? Wasn't this like the opening scene from the "The Mumy"?

"The panel managed to open the sixth vault but found an iron wall inside it, reports the BBC. The sixth vault has a snake on the front door and quoting an unnamed royal family source, it reports that opening it "might be a bad omen." The Guardian reports that the sixth vault has "special locks" but experts should be able to examine them and open it by Friday."

$22 Billion In Gold, Diamonds, Jewels Found In Indian Temple

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