Money, money, money ... the Business of Religion in India

So what say we start a religion in India that criticises all other Hindu religions and gets them to surrender their "mind, body and wealth" to it? Even if we only get 1% following it, that will still be worth multi-millions.

Nah, it will never work ... it has been done before. Note Sai Baba dies and leaves behind $9bn. Why are these god people hoarding it all rather than doing good?

And you know what the BKs, "everything on the path of Bhakti is a memorial of them and the Confluence Age".

Kerala temple's secret vaults yield £12bn in treasure: Jewels piled in sacks and tonnes of gold at Thiruvananthapuram temple worth more than India education budget

Treasure worth £12.5bn has been found in secret subterranean vaults at Sree Padmanabhaswamy in Kerala. Investigators plan to pry open the final vault hidden deep beneath an old Hindu temple where treasure worth more than India's entire education budget has been found. A seven-member team of experts has so far entered five of the six secret subterranean vaults piled high with an estimated $20bn (£12.5bn) worth of jewels which have lain untouched for hundreds of years.

"Traders, who used to come from other parts of the country and abroad for buying spices and other commodities, used to make handsome offerings to the deity for not only his blessings but also to please the then rulers," said PJ Cherian, director of Kerala Council for Historic Research.

As estimates of the treasure's worth rise, a fierce debate is growing regarding what to do with the hoard, in a country where 450 million people live in poverty. Leaders of the Hindu community want the wealth to be invested in the temple, while many intellectuals, including former supreme court judge VR Krishna Iyer have suggested it should be used for the public good.

The vaults were searched after a lawyer petitioned the country's top court to order the government to take over the temple as it did not have adequate security.

Several temples in India have billions of dollars worth of wealth as devotees donate gold and other precious objects as gifts to spiritual or religious institutions that run hospitals, schools and colleges.

The Tirumala temple in eastern Andhra Pradesh state is reported to have three tonnes of gold, a third of which it deposited with the State Bank of India last year, while spiritual guru Sai Baba, who died in April, left behind an $9bn estate.