No one knows when indians got the "gold fetish", but 2000 years ago, the Romans found that Indian merchants could not move when they saw Roman gold coins, and the corners of their mouths would show a mysterious smile, they would exchange all the goods in their hands for gold, and then happily return to India, and they did not want anything, they wanted gold, so historians believe that it may be this reason, and the ancient Westerners gave India a nickname, called "the country of the golden sparrow".
Most of these Roman gold coins were beaten into jewelry, but a large part, instead of disappearing, lay quietly in a mysterious temple in India, reappearing in 2000 years later, once again witnessing the madness of Indians for gold.
Sri Padmanabhaswamy
Sri Padmanabhaswamy is a famous temple in India, I'll abbreviate it as the Wami Temple. Because Indians don't like to write history, no one knows when it was built, but in the 800 years from 500 BC to 300 AD, it appeared frequently in Hindu texts and various epics, and it was called the "Golden Temple" at that time, because people believed that this temple contained countless gold and silver treasures.
Later, it was expanded many times, and to this day, the exterior of the main building of the temple is all painted with gold, which is a veritable golden temple.
For hundreds of years, everyone said that the sea of gold in the Vami Temple had gone, and it was donated by believers. In 2009, a retired Indian police officer (TP Sundararajan) filed a petition with the Kerala High Court, where the temple is located, asking the state government to take over the temple. So India's Supreme People's Court could not hold back, and in June 2011, it ordered the entrance and sent a group of 7 people to the temple to explore the treasure.
After these people went in, they found that there were 6 secret rooms, they opened 5, according to the Indian media, the scene was exactly like "Raiders of the Lost Ark", various cabinets and jars filled with gold and jewelry, and some even burst out of the wooden cabinets. Among them is a 1.2-meter-high golden statue of Vishnu incarnated with various gemstones, accompanied by a huge pure gold base, a 30-kilogram pure gold robe, thousands of gold chains, the largest of which is 5.5 meters long, a bundle of 500 kilograms of gold, three pure gold crowns, which should be donated by the kings, more than 100,000 gold coins of the Roman Empire, plus other gold utensils, as well as bags of emeralds, red sapphires, etc., with a total value of more than 1 trillion rupees. Equivalent to 15-20 billion US dollars, if the value of cultural relics is also counted, it may be added to the 0.
Of course, this is all said by the Indian media, which sounds a bit like the content of the marketing number, but I believe this number, why I will talk about it later.
So since 2011, the Temple of Vami has been known as one of the richest temples in the world, and that's not all. One of the most mysterious B chambers, it is said that it has the most gold inside, but it is not opened, because the local royal family is strongly opposed, and the reason why they speak well is because they have been the protectors of the temple in the past.
The royal family's reasoning is that opening it will have bad omens. It just so happened that at this time, the official who had written to open the temple 2 years ago suddenly fell ill and died a month after they went in to explore the treasure, so the common people also followed suit, saying that the owner of the temple, Vishnu, one of the three main gods of India, was not happy and cursed. In addition, there are two cobras on the door of this secret room, which is really scary, so the Indian government has not moved, and when cleaning up, the staff found two secret rooms and did not move.
Since the treasure was discovered, some Indian officials have suggested that the yellow money be used to meet the endless demand for gold in Indians, so as to save some foreign exchange for gold. But because of religious problems, no one dared to do this, and could only send a large number of policemen to guard the temple day and night.
The reason these officials want to do this is because India's demand for gold is overwhelming India's finances.
For a long time, India has been the world's largest importer of gold, with 20%-25% of global gold production bought by Indians every year.
According to Reuters, India imported a total of 1,050 tons of gold in 2021, up 244% year-on-year, spending a total of $55.7 billion, a record-breaking 1.8% of GDP, and the goods imported each year, in addition to oil, are gold. The surge in gold and oil imports led to India's trade deficit widening to $192.41 billion in the 2021-2022 fiscal year, compared to just $102.62 billion in the previous fiscal year.
In order to reduce the deficit, the Indian government began to control the import of gold, especially this year, India's economic situation is very bad, so the Indian government announced in June 2022 that the import tariff on gold will be raised from 7.5% to 12.5%. But this can not stop the Indian people's love of gold, and the number of imports in June is still unabated.
India is a data black hole, so no one knows how much gold Indians are hoarding. The World Gold Council has speculated that India's gold accounts for at least 10% of the world's gold reserves, or more than 15,000 tons.
So why are Indians so crazy about gold? There are several reasons for this.
The first is the religious dimension. Indians believe that gold is sacred, whether it is 18K or 24K. The three major Indian religions, Hinduism, Sikhism and Jainism, all regard gold as their main asset, and gold is an important part of Hindu religious rituals, so these temples all call on believers to donate gold to the temple, saying that God loves gold.
The reason why the Temple of Vami has attracted so much investment is because it is dedicated to Vishnu, one of the three main gods of Hinduism. In Hinduism, Brahma is the god of creation, also called the Four-Faced Buddha, who created all things in the universe, and Shiva is the god of destruction, with a violent personality, who can destroy everything in the world. Vishnu is the "god of maintenance", gentle in character, willing to save the world, protect sentient beings, and most like to fulfill people's small wishes, which can be simply understood as the Guanyin Bodhisattva of the Level of the Indian Buddha.
Vishnu
Coupled with the fact that his wife Lakshmi is the Hindu goddess of wealth and happiness, also known as the "auspicious goddess", so these two sons are extremely popular in India, from the king to the common people, there is no one who does not worship. According to sporadic literature, when the princes of the local lands reached adulthood, they would donate gold as heavy as their own to the Temple of Vami to pray for Vishnu's protection.
So all along, Hindus have been donating gold to various temples, such as another famous temple in India, the Sri Venkateswara temple, which is also one of the richest temples in the world.
Tirupathi Temple
Every day there are 5-100,000 believers worship, the annual income is between 300 million and 400 million US dollars, gold alone can collect a ton per year, last year there was a brother who donated a big sword, a total of 6.5 kilograms of gold, worth 40 million rupees, this brother said I have long wanted to donate, because the epidemic has been delayed, look at the people's realm, as well as sending big gold chains, gold magic tools, everything, send small are shameful.
What about the poor? Can you spare you, donate your hair without gold, go there, shave your head, this Tirupati temple, just sell wigs, you can earn $3 million a year.
This temple is dedicated not to other gods, but to Vishnu, but to an incarnation of him, and this temple is particularly wealthy, mainly because of a mythical story.
Once, Vishnu had a conflict between the two sons, and when he experienced life, his wife became a princess, just like in "Three Lives and Three Lives". In order to pursue her, Vishnu's avatar borrowed a large amount of gold from Kubela, the god of wealth, which was successful, but owed a bunch of debts. In order to repay Vishnu' money, the believers were willing to donate more gold to the temple.
You see, a lot of religious myths in India, overtly and covertly, are propagating the effect of gold on God, so I believe that there is so much gold in that vami temple. If you think about Abe's pick-up, Yamatoshi will understand that this is the power of faith. So the temples in India one by one, like the branch of the Korean Unification Church, but much stronger than it.
Since God liked gold, the Indians used gold in exchange for God's blessing on themselves.
So India's gold, a lot of it is hidden in countless temples around India, how much, no one knows, I checked the data, some said 3,000 to 4,000 tons, some said 200 million tons, there is no accurate.
What is this concept? The Federal Reserve Bank of New York's vault is the largest in the world, and as of 2019, there are dozens of countries with a total of 5620 metric tons of gold, and you can think of the strength of the Indian temple.
Therefore, the third brother is not poor, people have money, but they don't spend it.
This is due to the fact that it is in India, if this is done in China, no emperor can stand it, one is that the temptation is too great, and the money for building the palace is gone, and the second is that the national wealth has been lost in large quantities, which must be a mood with "three martial arts and one sect", and it must be copied.
But in India, this is a matter of course.
The religious spiritual worship of gold still comes from the helplessness of reality. Before the Arrival of the British, there were only three relatively unified dynasties in Indian history, and for most of the time, India was a geographical concept composed of countless native states, and the continuous division led to social unrest, and a person could even share several regimes in his lifetime. Gold can preserve its value and is easy to hide, so hoarding gold has become an important means for Indians to survive, which makes the whole country attach so much importance to gold.
But it is precisely with the blessing of religion that gold in India is not only valuable, but also divine, the embodiment of holiness, happiness and auspiciousness.
So in India, a person from birth, with gold, gold becomes an auspicious gift, children are born, birthdays, further education and even marriage, gold is the best gift.
Especially this wedding. In India, there is no gold and no marriage. 80-95% of the gold that India imports each year is made into jewelry, and a considerable part of it is used as a dowry for the bride.
As we all know, women in India have no status, they don't even dare to fight women's fists, and they can't inherit land, houses and other property. Which woman dares to divide the family property, the indian rule is generally to pour sulfuric acid, except for gold. Inheriting gold is the sacrosanct right of Indian women, and gold is also the only property of women, and no one can care about it.
Because in Hindu teachings, a married woman is auspicious, representing the auspicious goddess Lakshmi, that is, Vishnu and his wife. After a woman marries, it will bring wealth and offspring to the family, and gold can bring happiness and good luck to the bride, and can also improve the status of women in the in-laws' family, so gold is a prerequisite for all Indian women to marry, and parents must save gold for their daughters from an early age. The average family must prepare at least 100 grams of gold jewelry, the rich will need more than a kilogram, all hung on the body when they get married, even the poorest people have to give their children a gold nose ring.
So raising a girlfriend in India is a heavy burden, and if you can't afford it, you know, this leads to a serious imbalance in the gender ratio in India.
So the bride is the number one force in India's consumption of gold. In 2020, due to the epidemic, many weddings were postponed to the following year, which led to a surge of more than 2 times the amount of gold imported by India in 2021.
However, India's gold jewelry is not pure gold, but 18K or 22K, because many Indian women usually wear gold jewelry on the body, and pure gold is too soft, and daily wear is easy to deform.
In addition, because gold has divinity and is a symbol of wealth, it has become a tool for Indians to perfectly show off their wealth, or to be more precise, the embodiment of identity.
Indians and Chinese are not the same, our national character is highly restrained, but "muffled to make a fortune" in India, that is called a serious disease. Indian culture is like to show off, there are things that must be shown out, must be superior to others, Indian honey confidence, this is how it comes.
Gold has been a status symbol in India for thousands of years, and Indians believe that the more gold a person has, the greater his power. From the kings of the past to the stars, businessmen, and politicians of the present, they are willing to show their gold, which is the key to their standing out from the crowd.
Indians do this because of the caste system. Caste determines the social status of people, so identity is very important, what position are you, that must be shown, to be as low-key as Chinese, it is likely to be beaten by society, but it is not conducive to mixed society, you are wearing a body of gold, then the Indian police still dare to smoke you?
The caste system also determines that the people at the bottom will not rebel against the rich, and no one will fight the local tycoons, what are you afraid of?
There is also a part of gold that is made into gold bars for investment, but the proportion is very small.
But the Indians' madness about gold has led to many serious problems.
The first is that a large amount of social wealth is idle, which is not conducive to the formation and accumulation of Indian capital.
For developing countries, there is generally no shortage of labour and land, mainly capital. Domestic capital mainly comes from resident savings, that is, storing money in banks, and then banks lend to enterprises to promote production, or issue government bonds to raise funds for infrastructure construction and so on.
India is already poor and inefficient, but families use a considerable part of their income to buy gold, and it is made into jewelry to wear on the body, although the value is preserved, but the bank is missing a large amount of deposits, just like hiding money under the bed, which will pull down India's savings rate, inhibit investment, and there is no money for infrastructure.
Low production efficiency + purchase of gold leads to a low savings rate, low savings rate can not engage in infrastructure, infrastructure can not be done if the production efficiency can not go up, thus forming a vicious circle. That's why in the past India mainly relied on the software industry to develop its economy, because manufacturing required a lot of capital investment, while India didn't have that much money.
Domestic capital accumulation is slow, so it can only rely on foreign capital.
Another disadvantage is that India imports a lot of gold, resulting in a continuous loss of foreign exchange. India basically does not produce gold, mainly relying on imports, but imports cost foreign exchange.
In addition to foreign exchange used to buy industrial raw materials and other commodities, it also plays a role in stabilizing the exchange rate of the national currency, and if gold is in the hands of the Indian government, it has a strong supporting effect on the rupee. However, if a large number of consumer goods are imported, it is even worse in the case of a weaker rupee, so this year the exchange rate of the rupee against the US dollar has fallen sharply, India can not stand it, coupled with the trade deficit, which has increased the import tariffs on gold. But I don't dare to add it again, because if I add it again, the needs of the bride and the temple, the black market will all be for you.
Therefore, India has been a headache for gold in the past, always wanting to collect the people's gold, so that gold can become gold bars and enter the circulation market. For example, in 1962, after India was cleaned up by us, it ran out of foreign exchange, so the government enacted the Gold Control Law, which first prohibited private people from owning gold bars, and gold bars could not be made into jewelry, and then issued gold bonds for 15 years, that is, gold can be used to buy bonds. The result was a hefty 16.3 tonnes of gold, which led to a massive amount of gold smuggling and black market trading.
It is not surprising that, with the blessing of Hinduism, the gold fetishism of Indians is already in its late stages, and it cannot be changed by executive order.
After Modi came to power, he saw that so much gold in the house could not be used, which was quite uncomfortable. So in 2015, a scheme called the "Gold Monetization Plan" was launched, which is to call on residents and temples to have gold on their hands and eat interest in designated banks, especially temples.
Some temples have responded to the call, such as the Tirupati Temple I mentioned above, which deposited 1311 kilograms of 995 gold in the Punjab National Bank in 2016.
However, this plan was strongly opposed by many believers, such as a 52-year-old gold merchant in Mumbai who said that Lao Tzu and his two generations donated more than 200 kilograms of gold to the temple, which was for God, and that if you do this, it is a crime and a blasphemy against God. So this plan is not very successful.
So Indians still have to continue to love and kill each other with gold, and from the gold thing can also be seen, because of the existence of religion, India is not a modern country, many strange things, in other countries can not happen at all, but there is no problem in India, so India has always been known as a magical country, God is here, God is the god.
(Original is not easy, welcome to like the collection of forward comments!) ）