How to keep a secret for 3000 years? Padmanabhaswamy temple kept $3 trillion worth of treasures safe from Islamists, British and Communists by executing the greatest Indic heist in history of mankind.

6 min readJun 15, 2021

Padmanabhaswamy Temple and image of one of its Vaults

A communist attempt by Pinaryi Vijayan government to loot Padmanabhaswamy temple to fill their party coffers -

In 2009, a rat by the name of T P Sunderrajan filed a PIL in the district court of Tiruvananthapuram, challenging the authority of the Travancore royal family heir over the Padmanabhaswamy temple and its property.

Sunderrajan was a man propped by the CPI-M to ascertain as to how much wealth the temple owned. Back then, very few people knew the extent of opulence of the temple. But some rumour must have escaped because it got the hinduphobic CPI-M very interested in temple finances of Padmanabhaswamy.

In January 2011, the Kerala High Court passed an order that the temple and its management be given to the state government run by communists.

Come May 2011, Marthanda Varma, the royal heir, challenged the verdict in the supreme court which stayed the order. But the court also ordered the inventory of all the temple assets, especially the one in the underground vaults.

Thus came out the extent of wealth the temple held in its vaults -

Thousands upon thousands of gold coins, jewels and precious stones the size of people’s thumbs. A life size moorti of Vishnu cast out of pure gold and embedded with diamonds and rubies and emeralds.

There are french colonial era gold coins with Napoleon Bonaparte’s face on them. There also hundreds of pots of gold coins from the Roman and Greek empires dating back from before the birth of Christ.

The conservative estimate of this treasure is around $2–3 trillion, without even taking into account the unopened vaults and approximately 3 TONNES of gold dust lying around the vaults.

How did Sunderrajan know such a treasure is buried under the temple?

He’s a former Assistant Director of Intelligence Bureau and a close confidant of Indira Gandhi and a lifelong Congress loyalist.

It was in 2020 that finally the Supreme Court passed the order that the temple management belonged to the Travancore royal family and not the state government putting an end to Vijayan’s dream of looting Bhagwan Vishnu’s assets.

How Hindu kings sent their wealth to Bhagwan Padmanabhaswamy for safekeeping -

There are many speculations as to why the temple is so rich. One of the expert opinions is that all the Hindu wealth from across Bharat was relocated to Tiruvanathapuram for safekeeping. This included northern kingdoms too, since the southern kingdoms as south as Kerala did not interact with the Greeks.

It is the accumulated wealth of the Chelas, Pandyas, the Ay Kingdom and finally the Travancore Kingdom. But we can assume that wealth from erstwhile Northern kingdoms also found way here in the form of dana by visiting Hindu kings on a pilgrimage to pay obecience to Padmanabhaswamy.

The clandestine way the royal families kept the treasure a secret by way of renovations -

How does one construct a complete maze of vaults underground without people ever knowing?

The answer lies in deliberate sabotage and renovations.

The earliest record of renovations is recorded in 1050 AD when a Venad king ordered renovation by removing the moorti of Padmanabhaswamy.

Another extensive renovation was performed in 1461 AD and the moorti was reinstalled.

These “renovations” are nothing but careful and planned construction of the underground vaults and their expansion.

In 1689, the temple was almost destroyed in a fire. Only the moorti of Vishnu survived.

In 1729, Thirunal Marthanda Varma, finally began rebuilding in earnest. The construction ended in 1733.

I am speculating that it is here that all the vaults are constructed and deemed completed. Because right after this Thirunal Marthanda Varma announced himself as the servant of Vishnu or Padmanabha dasa, dedicating all his wealth to Vishnu.

In hindsight Marthanda is a visionary because the Dutch invasions and Islamic trouble started in 1735, a mere two years after the temple was completed.

But the fundamental question is that how did the temple keep the knowledge of such a treasure secret from the British and Islamist conquerors, especially the Mysore Sultanate?

The genius strategy to fool the British in 1848 -

Traditionally Travancore kings participated in the ceremony of mahadanams (great charity).

In this ceremony the king’s would give gold and wealth to the brahmins in their kingdom. Each brahmin would get at least 80 grams of gold as charity. They did this every year, and gave away gold to thousands of brahmins.

But in the account books they shared with the British, they showed depleting finances.

This “grave financial condition” concerned the Governor general of India and he warned the king Uttaran Tirunal in 1848 that if he continued doing this charity, his kingdom would be acceded to Madras presidency.

The king happily stopped the mahadanam ceremony to the happiness of the British who were finally satisfied that the kingdom would not bankrupt itself.

Thus by smart accounting and charity, the king easily made idiots of the British and kept them in the dark about the treasure.

Trouncing Tipu Sultan in battlefield and keeping the East India Company away with diplomacy in 1789 -

The first real threat by way of force after Travancore was formed came in the form of Tipu Sultan.

Karthika Thirunal Rama Varma was the son of Marthanda Varma, the king who established the Travancore royal family and declared the family as Padmanabhaswamy dasas(servants of Vishnu).

He made sure to keep the British calm by diplomacy, recognising that he could not have a war on two fronts with such a treasure under his safekeep.

When Tipu Sultan attacked with his son, Karthika Varma defeated him, and routed his Islamic ego.

The defeat was a significant one because there were thousands of Hindu refugees who had migrated to Tiruvanathapuram to escape the Islamic atrocities by Tipu Sultan.

Tipu had demanded that the refugees be returned to him, but Varma refused and went to war for the Hindu refugees and won this ending any possibility of Islamic attack and upholding Hindu dharma.

Thus by keeping people in the dark, the Travancore royal family and their descendants have kept the treasure away from malicious agents and agencies.

But this will not end here. The Communists and the Imperialist Congress forces want the temple treasure to be taken out and kept in a museum. Many voices also want to use the treasure to erase the debt by allowing government control over it. We know how much of it will be left when the Commies will go through it, looting god knows how much.

The royal family is right — the treasure belongs to Bhawan Padmanabhaswamy and Him only. They are just the caretakers. And what marvelous caretakers to protect Bhagwan’s treasure for over 3 millennia! No such feat of secrecy has been accomplished ever in the history of mankind. To know what would have happened to the treasure just look at the Mayan, Aztec and Egyptian treasures.

But the wolves are circling even now. This temple is a classic case why we need to make provisions to free temples from ever coming under government control.

We need to make sure that it remains Bhagwan’s forever.

Aum Padmanabhaya Namah!

PS. -

A little about the Travancore royal family tradition of Muramakkathayam or the matrilineal succession -

In the Travancore royal family, the women have more power than the men. The king was not the son of the previous king. To be the king he had to be born to the sister of the king. Thus the nephew would inherit the title of king.

If the king would beget only sons, a girl child would be adopted and then her son, who is not of king’s blood, would become the successor.

Show this to the people who attack Hinduism for being patriarchal. The richest religious institution in the WHOLE WORLD was and still is managed by the authority of women. And this is not the sole example either. There are many such. I will compile them in another post. That’s it.

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Source : https://www.reddit.com/r/IndiaSpeaks/comments/nzr5k6/how_to_keep_a_secret_for_3000_years/