Karl Marx Never Lied—testifies the Treasures of Sri Padmanabha

While discoursing upon the prolonged golden age of India that existed before colonial subjugation made by the pauperised English Sovereign for terrorised plunder and proselytisation, Karl Marx wrote: “Oppression and neglect of agriculture, bad as it is, could not be looked upon as the final blow dealt to Indian society by the British intruder, had it not been attended by a circumstance of quite different importance, a novelty in the Asiatic world. However changing the political aspect of India’s past must appear, its social condition remained unaltered since its remotest antiquity, until the first decennium of the 19th century. The hand-loom and the spinning wheel, producing their regular myriads of spinners and weavers, were the pivots of the structure of that society. From immemorial times, Europe received the admirable textures of Indian labour, sending in return for them her precious metals, and furnishing thereby material to the goldsmith, that indispensable member of Indian society, whose love of finery is so great that even the lowest class have commonly a pair of golden earrings and a gold ornament of some kind hung round their necks. Rings on the fingers and toes have also been common. Women as well as children frequently wore massive bracelets and anklets of gold and statuettes of divinities in gold and silver were met with in the households. It was the British intruder who broke up the Indian handloom and destroyed the spinning wheel.” [‘The British Rule in India’, Selected Works of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Vol I, Progress Publishers, Moscow]

If this detailed evaluation of Marx regarding the pre-colonial affluence of India is alluded for discussion, neo-Budhist fanatics and bigoted Communist cogitators, who are mal-intentionally pledged to stain the past of India, may evasively say: Marx never saw India, he was ignorant of Indian history and sociology and hence he wrote so. But recently, in June-July 2011, a high-powered committee of observers was constituted by the Supreme Court to prepare an inventory of secret assets preserved in six cellars of Sri Padmanabha-swamy Temple, Thiruvananthapuram, owned by the Travancore dynasty still. The media says that the monetary value of the wondrous treasures kept in the first five cellars exceeds rupees one lakh crore or one trillion. Such a huge amount has been apprised only on the metallic value of gold at current rate. The sixth colossal vault, kept unopened, is believed to have mammon, somewhat equivalent to, or perhaps higher than, that in all the five opened.

It may be taken into account that gold kept there is not bullions but ornaments. The value of those legendary jewelleries made before centuries with microscopic dexterity may not be asserted in terms of metallic estimate. Because the value of anything time-honoured shoots up in accordance with its quaintness and the actual transvaluation of antique ornaments is to be determined by demand. In addition, the value of many gemmed statuettes of deities made up of heavy gold belonging to the class of classical curios can also be determined by demand.

Another peerless object d’art, definitely the only one in the world, found in the temple treasury, was a broom made up of 5 kilogram gold threads used to clean the idol. Heaps of articles in gold used for daily offerings, namely, madder flowers, paddy, dishes, basins, trays, lamps, spouting pots are also kept in the treasuries. Moreover piled diamond, emerald, blue sapphire and other precious stones conserved are to be evaluated. It is a complicated process because the rate per carat of those stones increases according to shape, size and style of cutting. Such an evaluation is possible only for gemologists and it would take many days, even months, for completion. If such a mission is carried out, the value of stones alone become many trillions.

Above all, the most valuable materials preserved are gold coins in many bags. All those coins were used in various countries of the world at various periods of history. Regarding the collection of ancient coins “many such coins have been found in the collection of his highness Maharaja of Travancore, there are nine auri of the reign of the Emperor Augustus, 28 of Tiberius, 2 of Caligula, 16 of Cladius and 16 of Nero”. [Malabar Manual, William S. Logan]

Regarding Logan, he was an English Collector of Malabar district and while publishing the Manual in 1887, he surely had close relations with the Maharaja of Travancore. So far as aureus (auri-plural) is concerned, it is a gold coin weighing 10.87 grams minted by the Roman Emperors. Among them, Augustus, popularly known as Julius Caesar, was the first Roman Emperor and ruled from BC 27 to 14 AD. Following him, Tiberius ruled 14-37 AD, Caligula 37-41, Cladius 41-54, and Nero 54-68. If any one of such a coin is floated in the international market for auction sale, it would be sold for millions of dollars.

It was a usual practice of kings and the people of India to offer the most rare and valuable articles to the deity they worship. If the tremendous accumulation of gold coins in the safe-deposit is examined by experts, they can distinguish the garnishing currencies of pre-historic Europe. Because the Old testament (Exodus 30: 23 and 24) reveals that Cinnamon, a monopolic spice of Kerala, was used for devotion by Moses who lived in the unknown past and received the Ten Commandments from God. Regarding historic personalities in the Old Testament, King Solomon of BC 1000 had imported natural produces and handicrafts of Kerala. “The gold that decked Solomon’s temple in the halcyon days of Jewish sovereignty is said to have come from the Malabar cost whence came ivory, peacocks, apes and sandalwood that formed the cargo of Hiram’s shipmen that had knowledge of the sea.” [Malabar Gazetteer (1905), Charles Alexander Innes]

In addition to the spices of Kerala, Europeans had great demand for pepper which was the only medicine known to them for all diseases. Before the Renaissance imposed by Muslim savants following the fall of Constantinople in 1453, scientific research of Europe was circumro-tating about alchemy, manifesting the collectivised stupidity of that continent. Alchemists, on one hand, were toiling to brew up an elixir to prevent aging and death, and, on the other, to detect a methodology to metamorphose cheap metals like copper and lead to gold and silver. Thus Europe, submerged under the infatuation of alchemy, was ignorant of mathematics, science and astronomy and hence they were unable to develop an indigenous medicine like ancient India and Arabia. On that circumstance, pepper was their Catholicon. Kerala was the only territory producing pepper in the world and transoceanic traders as well as Arab hawkers on camel purchased it at any rate by exchanging gold. Thus pepper became the black gold of Kerala that enriched agriculturists, kings and deities.

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KARL MARX admired India, the great grand workshop producing textiles for the whole world. (East India Company—Its History and Results) Spinners and weavers of Kerala had a vital role for textile production and at the same time Europe was ailing due to utter scarcity of dressing materials since the unknown past. Lord Justice Pontius Pilate awarded capital punishment to Jesus Christ for love and mercy and crucified him immediately for the satisfaction of holy Themis, the sister of Nemesis and goddess of law and justice even now. After crucifixion, the executioners of Jesus stripped down his garment, tore it into four parts and took one piece by each. (The Gospel, according to John 19:23) Europeans were ready to dishonour dead bodies or even to murder a man ruthlessly for a piece of cloth. “When, in 1514, the baby son of Richard Hunne, a London tailor, died, the Priest demanded the linen sheet in which the baby had been wrapped at his baptism as payment for the funeral. Hunne refused to give it, was imprisoned, and later found murdered in his cell. (A History of England, John Thorn and others) Remember, under feudalism in Europe, churches were the biggest feudalists having their own jails, judicial courts, and other persecutionary measures without any law, unlike India far away from feudalism in history.

The scarcity of clothes continued in Europe until the full-fledged development of the industrial revolution, making use of scientific knowledge, capital and raw materials preyed from India. The snow-crested continent was not suitable for the cultivation of tropical crops, cotton and silk. Even if they had nominal production or raw cotton pillaged from Egypt, people were not talented or skilled in spinning or weaving. They were carnivorous and hence interested only in fishing, hunting, boat-making, dog-breeding and sea-piracy. As a majority of plebs were living as cavernous bipeds in iced forests they wanted only cheap dressing materials. For their use, the cheapest cotton fabric had been produced in Kerala and exported from Kozhikode port on a large scale. Westerners pronounced “Calicut” for Kozhikode and they named “Calico” for the cheapest fabrics they got from Kozhikode. In return, gold had been heaped up in Kerala, like that in other territories of India, and in that context Marx wrote on the ubiquitous gold in India and a small portion of it set apart for diety by people and rulers as seen in the strong chambers of Sri Padmanabhaswamy Temple at Thiruvananthapuram.

It may be remembered that Travancore was a small one among the 560 native states merged with the Indian Union after independence. If wealth set apart in the royal temple of a small principality is valuing this much unassessed quadrillions, what was the real asset of the larger India before the plunder of the insolvent English Sovereign? When Robert Clive was subjugating Bengal making use of traitorous untouchables, the erstwhile Buddhists and plundering everything on behalf of the English Sovereign in 1757, the national debt of England was two hundred and fifty million pounds, affirmed Winston Churchill. (A History of English-speaking People, Vol III) Remember a farthing, one-fourth of a penny, was sufficient to pay a day’s wage for a labourer then. Thereafter ships crammed up of looted gold, silver, foodgrains, cotton and silk were being routed from Calcutta to London regularly. Churchill says also that Clive looted a quarter million pounds personally for presenting his political godfather, old Chatham, in association with the great parliamentary manipulators, Henry Dundas and William Wilberforce. Even after the redemption of the national debt, the avaricious English Crown extended the mechanism of remorseless pillage from Bengal to other territories for capitalisation and in return they sowed famine, epidemics and Eastern Black Death over India.

However, the treasure of quadrillions kept in the safe chambers of Sri Padmanabhaswamy Temple is the only remnant of the golden past of India, as told by Karl Marx in his treatise one-and-a-half century ago.