023 Akshaya Tritiya is driving Indians into near-insanity

The hunger and thirst for gold is chasing the Indians to corruption and insanity.

Akshaya Tritiyaa, the gold-buying binge day, was by and large ignored in the 20th Century. The traditional jewellery purchase festivals like Pongal and Divali and the wedding seasons were enough to madden the middle class and wealth Indians of the last Century.

The Akshaya Tritiya is outsmarting every other festival. The amount of gold purchased on the Akshaya Tritiyaa day is multiplying in geometrical progression.

Indians buy approximately 15 to 20 tonnes of gold on the Akshaya Tritiya Day.

Akshaya Tritiya was a Jain Festival of penance, renunciation, and sacrifice. It has nothing to do with buying gold.

Akshaya Tritiya as a Hindu Festival also seeks its followers to worship the God Vishnu and his wife Goddess Lakshmi (Goddess of eight types of Wealth which include education, children, corn, valor, etc.). Worship of Kubera (God of monetary Wealth) used to take place on a low scale.

The problem with Commerce , Industry and Trade is : they enflare desires. They awaken and arouse desires which were dormant or non-existent in families and individuals. A Nation, after all, is nothing but, the collective embodiment and will of its individual citizens. A Nation becomes gold-crazy , when its constituent citizens become gold-greedy, resulting in uncontrollable corruption.

Live Example
Mr. Kethan Desai, the then President of the Medical Council of India, was arrested in April 2010 on charges of corruption. What was the amount of gold seized from him? 1.5 tonnes or 1,500 kg.

Seizing of gold ornaments of 1 kg. and silver utensils of 10 kg. is quite common in raids by Anti Corruption Department/CBI.

1 kg. gold has recently been offered as a lottery-prize, by an English newspaper, to promote its circulation. Buying a small gold ring of approx. 10 gms. itself is a great dream for an average Indian. Where is the question of buying one kg. gold, by a hardworking individual?

Sathya Sai Baba's craze for gold is not well-known. His Yajurveda Mandir's walls were covered with gold. He has a gold temple-car for himself. His capability to produce gold chains by slight of hand for presenting to his affluent devotees is his key business skill.

Indian scriptures are also full of references to thirst for gold.

King Janaka once wanted to test Brahmins. He has arranged for a thousand bulls. Every bull has two bags of thousand gold coins hung to its horns. He, then invited the assembled Brahmins. He asked any one of them who had self-confidence that he was endowed perfect gnaanam (knowledge) and claim the bullocks. No one initially came forward to claim the gold bags and the bulls, though everybody had an urge within himself to carry the treasure away. Sage Yagnavalkya after sometime came forward and claimed the lot. There were, thereafter, some arguments among the Brahmins so on and so forth.

Yudhisht`hira (Dharmaraja) , after the catastrophic Mahabharata war started suffering from a guilty complex of having annihilated his kith and kin. Sage Vyasa advised him, in Book 13 (Asvametha Parva) to perform a horse-sacrifice (Asvametha Yagna) and thereby cleanse his sins. Yudhisht`hira hesitated to perform the sacrifice because it needed tonnes of gold for gifting to priests, which did not have. Sage Vyasa advised him to dig Himalaya Mountains and procure the gold left out by Brahmanas in the sacrifice performed by King Marutta. Yudhisht`hira accordingly collected the gold from Himayalayas and completed the sacrifice.