472 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
(ii) The Indian Paper Currency, 1882.*
( a ) Section 11, Clause (b), requiring the Paper Currency Department to issue notes against silver coin made under the Portuguese Convention Act, 1881,†
( b ) Section 11, Clause (a), requiring the Paper Currency Department to issue notes against silver bullion or foreign silver coin.‡
( c ) Section 13. Only the proviso limiting the gold portion of the Paper Currency Reserve to one-fourth of the Total Reserve.§
These repeals by the Act were supplemented by an executive Notification No. 2663, announcing in conformity with the suggestion of the Herschell Committee that the Government Treasuries would receive sovereigns and half-sovereigns of current weight in payment of public dues at the rate of 15 rupees and 7 rupees 8 annas respectively.
Since gold was not made general legal tender by any of the above measures, it was feared that the Government might be embarrassed by the accumulation in its Treasuries of a stock money which it could not pay out in discharge of its obligations. To enable Government to rid the Treasuries of gold, should it accumulate in them to an inconvenient extent, there followed another Notification, No. 2664, requiring that the Currency Department should issue, on the requisition of the Controller-General, currency notes in exchange for gold coin or gold bullion, at the rate of one Government rupee for
7.53344 grs. trey of fine gold, or sovereigns or half-sovereigns at the rate of 15 rupees and 7 rupees 8 annas respectively.
To give effect to the second modification introduced by the Herschell Committee, there was issued a third Notification, No. 2662, to the effect that
“The Governor-General in Council hereby announces that, unitil further orders, gold coins and gold bullion will be received by the Mint Masters of the Calcutta and Bombay
- The repeal of these sections of the Act also called for the repeal of other sections depending upon them, such as sections 14 and 15 and alterations in Sections 21 and 28, to bring the whole Act in accord with the policy of a gold standard then inaugurated.
† The Convention had come to an end and the retention of the clause was therefore unnecessary.
‡ The retention of this clause would have been inconsistent with the closure of the Mints.
§ As gold was to be the future standard of India, this limitation was no longer necessary.