352 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
notwithstanding the repeated remonstrances addressed by the Court.* The Government of Bengal clung to the bimetallic standard with equal tenacity. Rather than demonetize the gold mohur, it took steps to alter its standard† by reducing its pure contents‡ from 189.4037 to 187.651 troy grs., so as to re-establish a bimetallic system on the basis of the ratio adopted by Madras in 1818. So great was its adherence to the bimetallic standard that in 1833 it undertook to alter§ the weight and fineness of the Sicca rupee to 196 grs. troy and
176 grs. fine, probably to rectify a likely divergence between the legal and the market ratios of the mohur to the rupee.¶
But in another direction the Government in India wanted to go further than the Court desired. The Court thought a uniform currency (i.e. a currency composed of like but independent units) was all that India needed. Indeed, they had given the Governments to understand that they did not wish for more in the matter of simplification of currency and were perfectly willing to allow the Sicca and the mohur to remain as they were, unassimilated.§§ A uniform currency was no doubt a great advance on the order of things such as was left by the successors of the Moghuls. But that was not enough, and the needs of the situation demanded a common currency based on a single unit in place of a uniform currency. Under the system of uniform currency each Presidency coined its own money, and the money coined at the Mints of the other Presidencies was not legal tender in its territories except at the Mint. This monetary independence would not have been very harmful if there had existed also financial independence between the three Presidencies. As a matter of fact, although each Presidency had its own fiscal system, yet they depended upon one another for the finance of their deficits. There was a regular system of “supply” between them, and the surplus in one was being constantly drawn upon to meet the deficits in others. In the absence of
- Cf. The Public Despatches to Madras dated March 6, 1810 ; July 10, 1811 ; and June 12, 1816.
† Preamble to the Bengal Regulation XIV of 1818.
‡ It, however, increased its weight from 190.895 to 204.710 troy grs.
§ Bengal Regulation VII of 1833.
¶ It may be that this alteration was also intended to make the Sicca rupee eleven-twelfths fine.
§§Cf. Despatch to Bengal dated March 11, 1829.