592 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
If Sir Edward Law had realized that this meant an abandonment of the gold standard, perhaps he would not have recorded the Minute, but what were the considerations alluded to in the Minute which led him thus to subvert the policy of a gold standard and a gold currency and put a limit on the gold part of the currency rather than on the rupee part of the currency ? They are to be found in a despatch, No. 302, dated September 6, 1900, from the Government of India, which says :—
“2. …… the receipts of gold continued and increased after December last. For more than eight months the gold in the currency reserve has exceeded, and the silver has been less, than the limits suggested in the despatch of June 18. By the middle of January the stock of gold in the currency reserve in India reached £5,000,000. The proposal made in that despatch was at once brought into operation ; later on we sent supplies of sovereigns to the larger District Treasuries, with instructions that they should be issued to anyone who desired to receive them in payments due or in exchange for rupees ; and in March we directed the Post Office to make in sovereigns all payments of money orders in the Presidency towns and Rangoon, and we requested the Presidency Banks to make in the Presidency towns and Rangoon payments on Government account as far as possible in sovereigns. These measures were taken, not so much in the expectation that they would in the early future relieve us of any large part of our surplus gold, but in the hope that they would accustom the people to gold, would hasten the time when it will pass into general circulation in considerable quantities, and by so doing, would mitigate in future years the difficulties that we were experiencing from the magnitude of our stock of gold and the depletion of our stock of rupees.
“3. In order to meet these difficulties and to secure, if possible, that we should have enough rupees for payment to presenters of currency notes and tenderers of gold, we began to coin additional rupees ……
“14. We may mention that we have closely watched the result of the measures described in paragraph 2. The issues of gold have been considerable; but much has come back