596 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
silver currency as may prove necessary. The Government should continue to give rupees for gold, but fresh rupees should not be coined until the proportion of gold in the currency is found to exceed the requirements of the public. We also recommend that any profit on the coinage of rupees should not be credited to the revenue or held as a portion of the ordinary balance of the Government of India, but should be kept in gold as a special reserve, entirely apart from the paper-currency reserve and the ordinary Treasury balances” [and be made freely available for foreign remittances whenever the exchange falls below specie point.]
Taking the two recommendations of the Committee together, where is the departure ? What the Government has done is precisely what the Committee had recommended. That the Government of India or the Chamberlain Commission should have admitted for a moment that there was a departure is not a little odd, for the very despatch which conveyed the Minute of Sir Edward Law to the Secretary of State opens with remarks which show that Government was earnestly following the recommendations of the Fowler Committee. It runs:—
“In our despatch No. 301 of August 24, 1899, we wrote with reference to paragraph 60 of the Report of the Indian Currency Committee [i.e. the Fowler Committee], that any profit made on rupee coinage should be held in gold as a special reserve, has not escaped our attention ; but the need for the coinage of additional rupees is not likely to occur for some time, and a decision on this point may be conveninently deferred.”
What Sir Edward Law did was to carry that recommendation into effect when the occasion arrived. In view of this it is useless to belabour the Government of India if the ideal of a gold standard with a gold currency was defeated by the coinage of rupees. But, even though the Government has in ignorance taken the blame on itself, it cannot be rightly thrown at its door. If the project has been defeated by the coinage of rupees, the question must be referred to the Fowler Committe. Why did the Committee permit the coinage of rupees ? There is no direct answer, but it may be guessed. It seems the Committee first decided that there should be a gold standard and a gold currency as desired by the Government of India. But then they seemed to have been worried by the question whether in the