Missing or not, Jagannath temple keys add twist to Odisha battle

Also Read: Odisha sets up committee for preparing inventory of Jagannath temple’s treasury

On Monday, addressing a public meeting in Angul, Prime Minister Narendra Modi opened a new chapter in the Ratna Bhandar controversy, alleging that the missing keys of the treasury had gone to Tamil Nadu, a broad swipe at the influence of Naveen Patnaik’s trusted aide VK Pandian, a former IAS officer originally from the southern state. “When the keys of houses are lost, we pray to Lord Jagannath and find them within one or two hours with the Lord’s blessing. But the keys of Lord Jagannath’s Ratna Bhandar are missing, and it has been six years now. The report of the commission of inquiry into the missing keys of the Ratna Bhandar has been suppressed,” Modi said.

The comments are significant in the election season because even as it seeks to make inroads into the state, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has pitched itself as the repository of “Odia asmita”, accusing the ruling Biju Janata Dal (BJD) of outsourcing its administration to “an outsider” such as Pandian.

On Tuesday, Pandian hit back at Modi, asking him to tell Odisha where the “lost keys” are. “I would humbly request the honourable Prime Minister who has so many authorities under him...he can enlighten the people of Odisha,” Pandian told PTI. In Tamil Nadu, where polling for the Lok Sabha elections has ended, chief minister MK Stalin was also prompted to react. “Modi should stop making such remarks against Tamils,” Stalin said.

The Jagannath Temple has long been central to both the state’s religious identity and its politics. In one election season after another, it has formed the bulwark of political campaigns to the state’s 21 Lok Sabha and 147 assembly seats. Most political candidates, particularly in and around Puri, often begin their outreach to people after bowing their heads to the deity; a call to Jagannath headlining most political speeches. And as the BJP tries to breach the BJD bastion, where it has eight Lok Sabha seats and 23 assembly seats — BJD has 12 Lok Sabha and 112 assembly seats respectively — the temple town could become the fulcrum of the state’s political battles.

A long-standing controversy

The Jagannath Temple’s Ratna Bhandar, situated next to the sanctum sanctorum that houses the primary idols, has long been considered the custodian of its riches. According to “Madala Panji”, the official chronicle of the temple that dates back to 12th century, Eastern Ganga monarch Anangabhima Dev III donated more than 250 kg of gold, intended for Jagannath’s finery, and other monarchs such as Gajapati Kapilendra Dev donated gold, jewels and utensils. In a survey of the Bhandar in 1978, the Odisha government said its inventory contained over 149.6kg of gold ornaments fitted with precious stones, 258.3kg of silver utensils, and other items.

That was the last audit ever conducted.

According to the rules followed in the temple, some of which are enshrined in Odisha’s Jagannath Temple Act, 1955, all the gold and jewels offered to Lord Jagannath are to be stored in two chambers of the Ratna Bhandar — inner and outer. The outer chamber is opened often, and used for various rituals through the year. The inner chamber, remains locked, only to be verified periodically. The Act mandates that an audit of the all the valuables in the inner chamber take place every three years. For 40 years, this mandate was ignored.

In March 2018, following a public interest litigation filed by Abhishek Das, the Orissa high court ordered ASI to inspect the structural condition of the Ratna Bhandar and submit a status report. On April 4 that year, the 16-member team then attempted to enter the Bhandar, but the keys given to them by the Puri district collector did not match the padlock, with little explanation from the government on how the keys were mismatched.

There was no immediate resolution, and on June 5, the state government ordered a probe by Raghubir Das, retired judge of the Orissa high court, into the case of the “missing keys”. Nine days later, however, there was another twist, when Arvind Agarwal, the then Puri district collector, said that an envelope containing a duplicate key of the inner chamber was found. While this key has never been used, the inquiry commission submitted its report to the state home department in November 2018, which has yet to be made public.

While the opposition, led by the BJP, has often raised the issue both in the state assembly and outside, the state government has scarcely reacted.

In 2023, Samir Mohanty, former president of the state BJP, filed another PIL in the high cour seeking fresh a inventory of the ornaments in the inner chambers. In September, the court ordered that a high-level committee should supervise the inventory process, and five months later, the state government formed a committee headed by retired Supreme Court judge Arijit Pasayat to plan it. The audit is scheduled for July 2024, when deities are taken out of the main temple for nine days during the annual Jagannath Rath Yatra.

Jagannath, an avatar of Vishnu, is often referred to in the state as the “first Odia.” In its cities and villages, the first wedding invitation goes to Jagannath, with families physically offering the invitation cards at the Jagannath temple closest to their homes. Inside the temple, life revolves around Jagannath, with a schedule that includes three meals a day and an afternoon siesta. The annual Rath Yatra, where thousands of people both from Odisha and outside throng Puri, is the one time the deity steps out of the bounds of the temple, and is carried on a chariot through the town.

Politics around the temple

In Puri and its surrounding villages, where the BJP’s Sambit Patra is up against Arup Patnaik of the BJD in a high-stakes battle for a seat that has eternal significance in Odisha’s electoral stakes, there is much conversation about the temple. There are some who are concerned about the missing keys; and some who point to the beautification of the Jagannath Temple by the BJD as evidence of the party’s connection with its Odia roots.

In Baliguali village, on the outskirts of Puri, 42-year-old Anusuya Pradhan says she is concerned about the safety and security of the jewellery in the Jagannath Temple. “We all have a right to know if the valuables inside the Ratna Bhandar are safe. After all, they belong to the Lord and we need assurance over their safety. Don’t we check our valuables kept in almirahs every now and then to ensure its safety?”

Twenty kilometres away, sitting in his grocery shop in Brahmagiri, Jalandhar Sahu is just as irate. “I wonder what is there to hide? Why don’t they just audit and tell us what all is there in the Ratna Bhandar?” he asked.

The BJD views the fresh raking up of the “missing keys” as part of a concerted BJP campaign that rests on two primary hinges -- one, that the BJP is the party that speaks for Hindus; and two, that over its two decades in power the Naveen Patnaik government has turned both corrupt, and moved away from regional aspirations, outsourcing its campaign to outsiders — Pandian being a case in point.

But BJD leaders also say that Patnaik had seen this coming, and in January 2024, unveiled the Jagannath Parikrama Prakalpa -- a ₹400 crore project that beautified a 75 metre corridor around the temple.

“The Parikrama project was a smart way to foil the BJP’s Hindutva card and reinforce the image of our party as the custodian of ‘Jagannath culture’ and regional pride. Naveen Patnaik wanted to deny BJP the opportunity of painting us as insensitive to Hindu aspirations,” said a senior BJD leader based in Puri who asked not to be named.

Bhabani Shankar Das, a lecturer at a government college in Balasore and a regular visitor to Puri, said that the corridor makeover has made a clear difference. “Now you can go around the temple without a problem. It is far cleaner than ever before and the temple’s divinity has been restored,” he said.

But if there are voices of approval, there are voices of dissent too. Madan Mohan Das, who sold glass bangles near the temple but had to shift away after the reconstruction of the corridor, said that he once voted for the BJD but will not go to the polling booth any more.

“None of the candidates have assured me about the rehabilitation of 700 other street vendors who lost their shops to the Jagannath Parikrama project. Before work on the project started, I used to earn ₹400-600 a day. Now, in my new place, I struggle to make ₹100 a day,” Das said.

The Sambit Patra twist

But even as Prime Minister Modi, Union home minister Amit Shah and the BJP have gone on the offensive on the issue of the Ratna Bhandar, a comment by Sambit Patra, the BJP Puri candidate, has given the BJD a handle to attack the challenger.

On Monday, during an interview to television channels, Patra said that the Lord Jagannath, too, was a “Modi bhakt.” Almost immediately, the BJD seized on the opportunity, and chief minister Naveen Patnaik wrote on X, “The Lord is the greatest Symbol of Odia Asmita. Calling Mahaprabhu a bhakt of another human being is totally condemnable. I strongly denounce the statement made by the BJP Puri Lok Sabha candidate and I appeal to the BJP to keep the Lord above any political discourse.”

A deeply embarrassed Patra first called his utterances a “slip of tongue”, arguing that in every other television utterance on the day, he said that “Modi was a Jagannath bhakt”, and not the other way around. But the BJD, Congress and even Arvind Kejriwal called his comments an example of the BJP’s growing hubris, and Patra announced a three day fast as penance, and on Wednesday, issued front page advertisements in local Odia newspapers seeking an apology.

BJP leaders however point out the hypocrisy of BJD leaders including Pandian who in the past have put Naveen Patnaik ahead of Lord Jagannath. In one such meeting, Pandian said the biggest identity of Odias was Naveen Patnaik(and not Lord Jagannath). Former BJD Rajya Sabha MP in one such meeting described Patnaik as Lord Jagannath. In the past, other smaller leaders have given outrageous statements on Lord Jagannath.

In Puri, people such as Ramachandra Dasmohapatra, senior servitor of the Jagannath Temple, alleged that both the BJP and the BJD were trying to squeeze political capital out of Lord Jagannath. “Both were electoral partners for nine years in between, and the Ratna Bhandar could have been audited several times,” he said.

But as politics and religion converge during elections, and parties make the missing keys, or temple beautification, or ostensible slips of tongue the centre of attention, the electoral fate of Odisha may well be locked away inside the Jagannath Temple.