Sustained stone-walling by temple authorities has forced the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to freeze its move to build a database of gold held by Kerala’s major temples.
The move, which came at the height of the rupee’s value depreciation and the ballooning of the country’s current account deficit (CAD), had set off a rumour that the RBI intended to seize the temples’ gold stocks and pawn them to raise foreign exchange in order to pay off international liabilities.
Last year’s revelation that the Padmanabhaswamy temple in Thiruvananthapuram held a treasure trove of thousands of crores of rupees worth of gold and precious stones only added to the scare. D.B. Binu of Kochi, a right-to-information activist, had sought the survey details from the RBI.
RBI’s reply to him shows that the central bank has abandoned its “discreet survey of gold in places of religious worship.”
None of the temple authorities asked by the RBI to provide details of the gold stocks held by their temples had responded. The RBI took no ‘further action’ on it and dropped the move, Binu told Business Line.
The RBI, in its reply to Binu, said three devaswom boards — Travancore, Kochi and Guruvayur — and the Attukal Bhagawathy Temple Trust had not provided details of their gold stocks.
Among them, the three devaswom boards administer the affairs of a large number of temples in the State.
Many major temples are known to hold large quantities of gold as well as jewellery made of gold and precious stones, some of which are used in religious ceremonies.
The total value of the gold and precious stones held at Sree Padmanabhaswamy temple was recently estimated to be over Rs 1 lakh crore, making it the wealthiest temple in the world, even surpassing the Tirupati temple.
In early September, the RBI had shot off a letter to the devaswom boards and the Attukal trust, seeking details of gold stocked at their temples.
In the ‘confidential’ letter, the RBI told the temple authorities that it was “in the process of building up statistics as to the quantum of gold available with the various places of worship.”
It promised that the “details shared by you would be kept secret with RBI and would not be disclosed.”
Several Hindu organisations and the BJP had condemned the RBI’s move as an encroachment on temple assets and an attack on Hindus’ religious freedom.