Tonsuring Makes Tirumala the Richest Deity in the World

The practice of tonsuring has helped make Tirumala Venkateswara Temple one of the richest religious pilgrimage sites in the world. Tonsuring is a ritual shaving off of all hair as a gesture of gratitude and devotion to the god. The Temple is located in a small city in the South Indian state of Tirumala, Andhra Pradesh. It is also known as Tirupati Venkateswara Temple and the Temple of Seven Hills. It is a Temple of the Vaishnava sect of Hinduism located on the top of Tirumala hills. Since the nineteenth century, devout Hindus have come to pay their respects to the resident deity, Lord Venkateswara, one of the forms of the god Vishnu. For many of the pilgrims, women and men alike, the visit to the temple is not complete without tonsuring. These devotees believe if they give up their hair the god will grant them any wish.

In the temple's main tonsuring room, lines of women wait barefoot on a white tiled floor that is grimy, slippery, and strewn with matted clumps of hair. One by one the women, wearing their festival best, sit on the floor before a line of barbers who have towels spread across their laps, as they lower their heads forward over the tiled floor. The temple usually goes through an average of 50,000 blades a day. Huge amounts of hair is swept into giant steel bins about eight feet high and about twice the diameter of a standard New York City trash can. Teams of men empty the steel bins, stuffing skein after skein of hair into burlap sacks. These sacks are then brought to a central collection point where the hair is spread out and dried. The dark piles of human hair are waist-deep. After the hair is dried it is sorted into grades, depending on its length. The price for temple hair has tripled over the past five years due to the quickly growing hair-extension industry. Good quality hair which is more than 16 inches long can sell for 12,000 rupees (about $245) per kilogram or more. This makes their deity the richest deity in the world.

This lush, highest-quality hair extension available to the mass market around the world has helped create the soaring Western demand for "temple hair", as it is called. Temple hair usually comes from Tirumala, the largest of the South Indian temples where tonsuring is practiced. Due to the glossy, healthy, waist length hair from the heads of young Indian women who have not cut their hair since early childhood, and have not used anything harsher on their hair than fresh coconut oil and herbal Ayurvedic soap, is sold at the highest price. Ayurvedic soap is made in India from all natural oils and herbal extracts which aid cleansing and help with all skin conditions.

Bret Butcher is the national program director for the American arm of the Italy-based high-end hair-extensions maker, Great Lengths. According to Mr. Butcher, even after it has been sorted, cleaned, processed, stripped of color, re-colored, stitched into extensions, curled or straightened, and bonded to a woman's natural hair, extensions made with temple hair can last for up to six months, while being brushed, washed and styled just as if it was the wearer's own hair.

SDTC Exports, the biggest independent company, buys temple hair from Tirumala, does part of the processing, then sells it to Great Lengths. With SDTC Exports' knowledge of the value of the hair and the amount of revenue it produces, they take very good care to ensure it is collected and stored in the proper way by monitoring storage procedures.

Three or four times a year, collected hair is auctioned. Roughly 100 tons of human hair is sold per year. Before the hair extensions craze ten years ago, hair was sold to wig makers or furniture companies as mattress stuffing. Far less of the hair was sold and for far less money. The hair now brings the temple 100 crore rupees (about $20.6 million) annually. This money goes back to the temple and the community, including local hospitals, religious schools and providing free meals to needy pilgrims visiting the temple.