 "Temple run")
The charges, counter-charges, allegations and rumours swirling around are yet to disturb a reclining Padmanabha from his repose in the sanctum sanctorum of the temple dedicated to him in the heart of Thiruvananthapuram. At 18 feet, the bejewelled, black statue is enormous and devotees are only allowed brief glimpses through three doors before being chivvied out by temple staff. When a devotee murmurs in protest in an attempt to tarry a little longer, he gets an earful from a hefty staff member attired in the golden-edged white mundu that is their uniform.
Within the premises of the imposing Sree Padmanabhaswamy Temple, it is thus business as usual, with no palpable sign of the raging controversy that has been surrounding it for the past week. At the main East Nada, or entrance, a small crowd mills around the “cloak room” where you need to deposit all electronic gadgets and also your shirt and trousers which you have to compulsorily substitute for a white dhoti, unless you fortuitously happen to be wearing one. Women in saris are waved inside but everyone else has to wrap the white ottamundu around the waist, which one is made to buy for Rs 80. The commandos near the gate and the policemen in khaki and camouflage and the scanner atop the steps are reminders of the last time the temple shot to international fame in 2011 when a committee appointed by the Supreme Court to prepare an inventory discovered that its subterranean vaults contained gold, ornaments, precious stones and other valuables, the value of which might exceed Rs 100,000 crore, according to some estimates.
But the controversy this time around is unsavoury. The Supreme Court has pronounced an interim order keeping the former royal family of Travancore, the trustees of the temple for centuries, out of its administration, and ordered an audit of the temple’s accounts of the past 20 years by former Comptroller & Auditor General Vinod Rai. So shocked were they by the verdict, reported one daily, that a member of the erstwhile royal family told a reporter that he must be mistaken. Despite repeated attempts, the palace could not be contacted for comments, but former princess Pooyam Thirunal Gouri Parvathi Bai later told reporters that it was not appropriate to comment on a case that is currently ongoing. But she added in moved tones: “Padmanabhaswami is our life and soul… to allege that we stole even a single object of his is the very limit of adharma…”
The order is in line with the recommendations of amicus curiae Gopal Subramaniam who, in a 575-page report, disclosed numerous anomalies he had discovered at the temple during his 35-day stay in Thiruvananthapuram, for which he held the palace, as trustees, responsible. The most sensational of these included the discovery of a gold plating machine on the temple premises, gold and valuables amounting to crores that were unaccounted for, instances of sexual harassment of female staff, improper accounts including failure to keep stock of devotees’ offerings, and a demand to reinvestigate the death of an auto-rickshaw driver whose body was found in the temple tank with ante mortem injuries. Methods adopted to quell resistance were horrific, he wrote, and in one instance included acid being thrown on the alleged whistleblower. The state government was also hauled up for not cleaning the main temple pond, the waters of which had become so polluted that an expert committee had said it could cause skin cancer.
According to Subramaniam, these were not just instances of the head of an enormous and complex trust being unaware of what was going on — he even suggested that pilferage of temple valuables had been taking place over years with the collusion of the royal family. About the gold plating machine, for example, he has written: “This discovery raises a doubt of organised extraction by persons belonging to the highest echelons.”
Residents of the city appear torn between loyalty to the deity, from whom the capital derives its name from, and the erstwhile royal family, generally held in high regard. The two have been inextricably linked since 1750 when Anizham Thirunal Marthanda Varma, perhaps the most well-known ruler of Travancore, had not only dedicated all his wealth and his kingdom to the temple in a ceremony known as Thrippadi Danam, but had also taken an oath that he and his descendants would rule Travancore on behalf of the deity as Padmanabha Dasas, or servants of the god, a unique gesture.
“At least 50 per cent of the population here is pro-royal family, and will be ‘allergic’ to the verdict. Although the court says he is not a maharaja, even ministers do not refer to them by name: they say ‘his highness’... In Trivandrum, displeasing the (former) royal family is unthinkable,” says TP Sankarankutty Nair, a well-known historian and director of the Institute of Kerala Studies. In a small shop at the western entrance to the temple, Nair’s line of thought is echoed by Purushottaman Das, a middle-aged man who describes himself as a devotee and, interestingly, a Leftist. “People feel the royal family should not have been kept completely out of it,” says Das. An element of Hindu victimhood enters the discussion when Das says that had this been a church or a mosque, no court or official would have dared to interfere in the administration.
This is a particularly sensitive theme in Kerala where Chief Minister Oommen Chandy, whose government is heavily dependent on the Muslim League and Kerala Congress for survival, has been repeatedly criticised for minority appeasement. “I have been in touch with various Hindu organisations and soon, there will be a massive agitation,” says Das. Chandy himself has been criticised for his reaction to the verdict, where he said that he could not bring himself to agree with an approach that denigrates “the royal family”. Former minister and Communist Party of India (Marxist) MLA MA Baby says Chandy appeared to be going out of his way to question the Supreme Court verdict. “There are sufficient grounds for serious suspicion, so let Vinod Rai give us a report. Till then, I will neither say they have undertaken pilferage nor that they are absolutely innocent,” says Baby.
A few buildings away from the temple’s western entrance is the office of TPS Associates Advocates, where lawyer TK Ananda Padmanabhan sits. It was Padmanabhan’s late uncle, TP Sundara Rajan, a former IPS officer and Supreme Court lawyer, who had petitioned the court for protection of the temple assets and set off the chain of events that have culminated in the latest developments. A large portrait of Sundara Rajan with the Supreme Court and the temple in the background hangs in his office. Padmanabhan, who feels vindicated by the apex court verdict, has little time for the argument that the wealth once belonged to the family and hence, they had the right to take what they wished to. He points to various judgements and the history of the temple to underline this.
According to the Agreement of Accession signed by the then king of Travancore, Chithira Tirunal Balarama Varma, with the government of India in 1949, the administration of the temple was to be “vested in trust” with the “Ruler” of Travancore. However, with the abolition of the privy purses and other privileges in 1971, this “Ruler” would, after the demise of the former maharaja in 1991, be the state, and not his brother, Uthradom Thirunal Marthanda Varma, according to various judgements of the lower courts which were upheld by the Supreme Court. “And once you give something to a temple as an offering, can you take it back,” he asks.
For their efforts, Padmanabhan says he and his uncle faced harassment and intimidation, including threats of physical assault, from various quarters since 2007, when the first petition was filed in a trial court against a circular issued at the orders of the late Marthanda Varma that the vaults were to be opened so that its contents could be photographed. The trial court had passed an injunction against the move and held that the family had no rights to the temple. “But because it was a trial court, nobody took it seriously,” he says, with a wry smile. But the stand was upheld by the high court and later, the Supreme Court. The issue, he says, is very simple: “Do you want the assets of the temple to be protected, or not? Why would anyone oppose this?” The lawyer raises numerous questions about the conduct of the erstwhile royal family, mentioned in the amicus curiae report, such as why they had not produced an inventory of the valuables, even now. When asked about a widely-held theory that uncle and nephew had taken up the cudgels on behalf of the deity because they had been asked by Marthanda Varma to vacate their office and residence which is part of the temple premises, Padmanabhan smiles once again: “If that is so, let them show the documents (of ownership) to prove the charge.”
While there may be allegations of ulterior motives about Padmanabhan’s crusade to safeguard the temple wealth, none can be attached to MG Sasibhooshan, a historian and an authority on the temple, who was also a member of the Supreme Court-appointed conservation committee, and chairman of the expert committee for a brief period. Sasibhooshan accompanied the amicus curiae for 31 of the 35 days he was in the city and says that while he used to be a staunch defender of the erstwhile royal family in the past, he has had to change his stance in the light of what he saw during that time, though it saddened him. “There are two possibilities,” he explains in measured tones. “Either the temple officials stole the valuables using the name of the royal family, or the family used the officers to take the gold. That has to be investigated. But what is indisputable is that systematic theft has taken place.”
The thefts, he said, had been carried out in various ways. For example, if a pot covered with 28-carat gold was sent for repairs, what returned would be a pot covered in 14-carat gold. “The amicus curiae has used the word mafia,” he says. Sasibhooshan was part of a three-member team sent by the amicus curiae to inform the former royals that pilferages were happening, but says the palace refuted the charges completely. Another stand of the palace that raised doubts was the insistence that Vault B, the contents of which are yet to be examined by the expert committee, had never been opened and that a devaprashnam (a ceremony) would have to be conducted first. “They said it had never been opened, when it had, in 1931,” he contradicts.
Opinion might be divided over where to pin responsibility, but few dispute the amicus curiae’s conclusions that property has been stolen, and that the temple administration needs to set its house in order. The Supreme Court announced that the administration would now be in the hands of a new committee to be headed by the district judge who would have the keys to all the vaults except those in which articles for daily rituals are kept. The final verdict by the Supreme Court is expected in August.
But while the report is exhaustive and draws attention to several pertinent issues that warrant resolution at the earliest, a careful reading suggests certain remarks of Subramaniam seem a bit premature. He has, for instance, written that “There were attempts to photograph the jewellery, not for safekeeping, but possibly, to make information available to buyers as the Royal Family did believe these are personal treasures.” Whether this was sufficient evidence to conclude that the motive was the sale of the valuables may be a moot point. And while the grounds for leasing out temple premises to the Shiv Sena for an office can certainly be questioned, and lend credence to the assertion that political parties were being used to intimidate temple employees, should the presence of an ambulance near a temple entrance also be seen as “a veiled threat to those who work there”, merely because ambulances are used to “carry dead bodies”?
Interestingly, the same amicus curiae, in his initial report, had said “...the Royal family of erstwhile Travancore has no desire to appropriate any treasure of the Temple. On the contrary, the family has substantially contributed to the Temple and hence the degree of anguish being experienced by the Royal family on the suggestion of any malfeasance or taking away of the property of the Temple is understandable…”, and that “...it is necessary that the Royal family is associated with the administration of the Temple”, adding in admiring tones that “His Highness Sri Marthanda Varma of the erstwhile State of Travancore visits the Temple daily even at the grand old age of 90.” The new report, of course, is a polar opposite.
Within the premises of the imposing Sree Padmanabhaswamy Temple, it is thus business as usual, with no palpable sign of the raging controversy that has been surrounding it for the past week. At the main East Nada, or entrance, a small crowd mills around the “cloak room” where you need to deposit all electronic gadgets and also your shirt and trousers which you have to compulsorily substitute for a white dhoti, unless you fortuitously happen to be wearing one. Women in saris are waved inside but everyone else has to wrap the white ottamundu around the waist, which one is made to buy for Rs 80. The commandos near the gate and the policemen in khaki and camouflage and the scanner atop the steps are reminders of the last time the temple shot to international fame in 2011 when a committee appointed by the Supreme Court to prepare an inventory discovered that its subterranean vaults contained gold, ornaments, precious stones and other valuables, the value of which might exceed Rs 100,000 crore, according to some estimates.
But the controversy this time around is unsavoury. The Supreme Court has pronounced an interim order keeping the former royal family of Travancore, the trustees of the temple for centuries, out of its administration, and ordered an audit of the temple’s accounts of the past 20 years by former Comptroller & Auditor General Vinod Rai. So shocked were they by the verdict, reported one daily, that a member of the erstwhile royal family told a reporter that he must be mistaken. Despite repeated attempts, the palace could not be contacted for comments, but former princess Pooyam Thirunal Gouri Parvathi Bai later told reporters that it was not appropriate to comment on a case that is currently ongoing. But she added in moved tones: “Padmanabhaswami is our life and soul… to allege that we stole even a single object of his is the very limit of adharma…”
The order is in line with the recommendations of amicus curiae Gopal Subramaniam who, in a 575-page report, disclosed numerous anomalies he had discovered at the temple during his 35-day stay in Thiruvananthapuram, for which he held the palace, as trustees, responsible. The most sensational of these included the discovery of a gold plating machine on the temple premises, gold and valuables amounting to crores that were unaccounted for, instances of sexual harassment of female staff, improper accounts including failure to keep stock of devotees’ offerings, and a demand to reinvestigate the death of an auto-rickshaw driver whose body was found in the temple tank with ante mortem injuries. Methods adopted to quell resistance were horrific, he wrote, and in one instance included acid being thrown on the alleged whistleblower. The state government was also hauled up for not cleaning the main temple pond, the waters of which had become so polluted that an expert committee had said it could cause skin cancer.
According to Subramaniam, these were not just instances of the head of an enormous and complex trust being unaware of what was going on — he even suggested that pilferage of temple valuables had been taking place over years with the collusion of the royal family. About the gold plating machine, for example, he has written: “This discovery raises a doubt of organised extraction by persons belonging to the highest echelons.”
Residents of the city appear torn between loyalty to the deity, from whom the capital derives its name from, and the erstwhile royal family, generally held in high regard. The two have been inextricably linked since 1750 when Anizham Thirunal Marthanda Varma, perhaps the most well-known ruler of Travancore, had not only dedicated all his wealth and his kingdom to the temple in a ceremony known as Thrippadi Danam, but had also taken an oath that he and his descendants would rule Travancore on behalf of the deity as Padmanabha Dasas, or servants of the god, a unique gesture.
“At least 50 per cent of the population here is pro-royal family, and will be ‘allergic’ to the verdict. Although the court says he is not a maharaja, even ministers do not refer to them by name: they say ‘his highness’... In Trivandrum, displeasing the (former) royal family is unthinkable,” says TP Sankarankutty Nair, a well-known historian and director of the Institute of Kerala Studies. In a small shop at the western entrance to the temple, Nair’s line of thought is echoed by Purushottaman Das, a middle-aged man who describes himself as a devotee and, interestingly, a Leftist. “People feel the royal family should not have been kept completely out of it,” says Das. An element of Hindu victimhood enters the discussion when Das says that had this been a church or a mosque, no court or official would have dared to interfere in the administration.
This is a particularly sensitive theme in Kerala where Chief Minister Oommen Chandy, whose government is heavily dependent on the Muslim League and Kerala Congress for survival, has been repeatedly criticised for minority appeasement. “I have been in touch with various Hindu organisations and soon, there will be a massive agitation,” says Das. Chandy himself has been criticised for his reaction to the verdict, where he said that he could not bring himself to agree with an approach that denigrates “the royal family”. Former minister and Communist Party of India (Marxist) MLA MA Baby says Chandy appeared to be going out of his way to question the Supreme Court verdict. “There are sufficient grounds for serious suspicion, so let Vinod Rai give us a report. Till then, I will neither say they have undertaken pilferage nor that they are absolutely innocent,” says Baby.
TK Ananda Padmanabhan
While underlining that he is no royalist and that a Central Bureau of Investigation enquiry was the need of the hour, Sankarankutty Nair, who stays a few kilometres away from the temple, is of the view that if the ex-royals wanted, they could have taken the wealth before 2007 when the first petition was filed, but since they had left the wealth inside, “it is difficult to believe they stole it”. His rationale is that the years during which the family held the reins of the temple trust, some minor lapses might have occurred, and that since there was no distinction between temple and palace wealth before Independence, the family might have looked upon it as private wealth.A few buildings away from the temple’s western entrance is the office of TPS Associates Advocates, where lawyer TK Ananda Padmanabhan sits. It was Padmanabhan’s late uncle, TP Sundara Rajan, a former IPS officer and Supreme Court lawyer, who had petitioned the court for protection of the temple assets and set off the chain of events that have culminated in the latest developments. A large portrait of Sundara Rajan with the Supreme Court and the temple in the background hangs in his office. Padmanabhan, who feels vindicated by the apex court verdict, has little time for the argument that the wealth once belonged to the family and hence, they had the right to take what they wished to. He points to various judgements and the history of the temple to underline this.
According to the Agreement of Accession signed by the then king of Travancore, Chithira Tirunal Balarama Varma, with the government of India in 1949, the administration of the temple was to be “vested in trust” with the “Ruler” of Travancore. However, with the abolition of the privy purses and other privileges in 1971, this “Ruler” would, after the demise of the former maharaja in 1991, be the state, and not his brother, Uthradom Thirunal Marthanda Varma, according to various judgements of the lower courts which were upheld by the Supreme Court. “And once you give something to a temple as an offering, can you take it back,” he asks.
For their efforts, Padmanabhan says he and his uncle faced harassment and intimidation, including threats of physical assault, from various quarters since 2007, when the first petition was filed in a trial court against a circular issued at the orders of the late Marthanda Varma that the vaults were to be opened so that its contents could be photographed. The trial court had passed an injunction against the move and held that the family had no rights to the temple. “But because it was a trial court, nobody took it seriously,” he says, with a wry smile. But the stand was upheld by the high court and later, the Supreme Court. The issue, he says, is very simple: “Do you want the assets of the temple to be protected, or not? Why would anyone oppose this?” The lawyer raises numerous questions about the conduct of the erstwhile royal family, mentioned in the amicus curiae report, such as why they had not produced an inventory of the valuables, even now. When asked about a widely-held theory that uncle and nephew had taken up the cudgels on behalf of the deity because they had been asked by Marthanda Varma to vacate their office and residence which is part of the temple premises, Padmanabhan smiles once again: “If that is so, let them show the documents (of ownership) to prove the charge.”
While there may be allegations of ulterior motives about Padmanabhan’s crusade to safeguard the temple wealth, none can be attached to MG Sasibhooshan, a historian and an authority on the temple, who was also a member of the Supreme Court-appointed conservation committee, and chairman of the expert committee for a brief period. Sasibhooshan accompanied the amicus curiae for 31 of the 35 days he was in the city and says that while he used to be a staunch defender of the erstwhile royal family in the past, he has had to change his stance in the light of what he saw during that time, though it saddened him. “There are two possibilities,” he explains in measured tones. “Either the temple officials stole the valuables using the name of the royal family, or the family used the officers to take the gold. That has to be investigated. But what is indisputable is that systematic theft has taken place.”
The thefts, he said, had been carried out in various ways. For example, if a pot covered with 28-carat gold was sent for repairs, what returned would be a pot covered in 14-carat gold. “The amicus curiae has used the word mafia,” he says. Sasibhooshan was part of a three-member team sent by the amicus curiae to inform the former royals that pilferages were happening, but says the palace refuted the charges completely. Another stand of the palace that raised doubts was the insistence that Vault B, the contents of which are yet to be examined by the expert committee, had never been opened and that a devaprashnam (a ceremony) would have to be conducted first. “They said it had never been opened, when it had, in 1931,” he contradicts.
Opinion might be divided over where to pin responsibility, but few dispute the amicus curiae’s conclusions that property has been stolen, and that the temple administration needs to set its house in order. The Supreme Court announced that the administration would now be in the hands of a new committee to be headed by the district judge who would have the keys to all the vaults except those in which articles for daily rituals are kept. The final verdict by the Supreme Court is expected in August.
But while the report is exhaustive and draws attention to several pertinent issues that warrant resolution at the earliest, a careful reading suggests certain remarks of Subramaniam seem a bit premature. He has, for instance, written that “There were attempts to photograph the jewellery, not for safekeeping, but possibly, to make information available to buyers as the Royal Family did believe these are personal treasures.” Whether this was sufficient evidence to conclude that the motive was the sale of the valuables may be a moot point. And while the grounds for leasing out temple premises to the Shiv Sena for an office can certainly be questioned, and lend credence to the assertion that political parties were being used to intimidate temple employees, should the presence of an ambulance near a temple entrance also be seen as “a veiled threat to those who work there”, merely because ambulances are used to “carry dead bodies”?
Interestingly, the same amicus curiae, in his initial report, had said “...the Royal family of erstwhile Travancore has no desire to appropriate any treasure of the Temple. On the contrary, the family has substantially contributed to the Temple and hence the degree of anguish being experienced by the Royal family on the suggestion of any malfeasance or taking away of the property of the Temple is understandable…”, and that “...it is necessary that the Royal family is associated with the administration of the Temple”, adding in admiring tones that “His Highness Sri Marthanda Varma of the erstwhile State of Travancore visits the Temple daily even at the grand old age of 90.” The new report, of course, is a polar opposite.