VARANASI, INDIA, AUGUST 3, 2011: In Varanasi, the temple city in Uttar Pradesh, devotees deposit their prayers dedicated to Lord Shiva. The ‘banking’ temple close to the banks of River Ganga was set up in 2002 and it accepts deposits in form of handwritten chants Om Namah Shivaya. Devotees believe they would be blessed by this exercise of depositing the handwritten Panchakshara Mantra (devotional hymn dedicated to Lord Shiva).
“You just need to take a notebook and become a member of this religious bank. There is no fee to open an account; one has to merely write Panchakshara Mantra innumerable times. The difference between the two banks is that unlike the commercial bank it is not money oriented and does not take any deposit to open account. Here prayers and belief in Lord Shiva are accumulated. Well, there is no tax on anything,” said devotee Rajendra Trivedi.
Over the years millions of such handwritten papers have been deposited and these have been bundled and kept in shelves at the “spiritual bank.”