478 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
defective because, although it provided for the expansion of currency by making gold legal tender, it made the rupee entirely inconvertible, and thereby likely to defeat the policy of stabilizing its exchange value. On the other hand, they deemed their plans to be superior to that of the Government of India because they recognized the obligation to provide for the conversion of the rupee currency on certain terms. Although the plans of both of them had contemplated some kind of convertibility, yet they materially differed in the particular mode in which conversion was to be effected. Mr. Probyn proposed*:—
That legislative effect should be given to the notification of 1893, under which the public can obtain rupees at the Indian Mints and Reserve Treasuries in exchange for gold, at the rate of 1s. 4d.
That the gold so received should be part of the paper currency reserve, and should be held either in the form of full legal-tender gold coins of the United Kingdom, or gold bars representing not less than Rs. 1,000 each.
That in order to give the rupee currency automatic power of contraction, Government should be empowered (though not required) so soon as the portion of the paper currency reserve has continuously for one year been less than that held in gold, to give gold in exchange for rupees or rupee notes at the rate of 1s. 4d., if presented for the purpose in quantities of Rs. 10,000.
That the existing Rs. 10,000 notes should be called in, and, in future, notes of Rs. 10,000, payable at the option of the holder either in gold or in silver rupees, should be issued in exchange for gold alone, gold in the form of bars being specially reserved to meet any such notes outstanding.
Mr. Lindsay, on the other hand, followed on lines quite different from those adopted by Mr. Probyn. He proposed† that the Government should offer to sell, without limit on the one
- Cf. his Indian Coinage and Currency, Effingham Wilson, London, 1897, passim, particularly p. 121. Also the summary by Lindsay in the Economic Journal, Vol. VII, pp. 574-75.
† The earliest elaboration of his plan is to be found in his article in the Calcutta Review for October, 1878, under the title, “A Gold Standard without a Gold Coinage in England and India,” and the latest, in his pamphlet called Ricardo’s Exchange Remedy, Effingham Wilson, 1892. The plan was further developed in the newspaper Pioneer of Allahabad (India), dated January 6, 1898, full extracts from which are given in C. 8840 of 1898, p. 13.