3
EVIDENCE*
Before the Royal Commission on Indian Currency
and Finance on 15th December 1925
Dr. B. R. Ambedkar, Barrister-at-Law, called and examined.
(Chairman.) Dr. Ambedkar, you are a Barrister-at-law, and you have been kind enough to furnish the Commission with a memorandum in which your recommendations as regards the Indian currency system are set forth in detail. I think you have also been nominated as one of the representatives of the Institute of Social and Political Science ?—Yes.
Whose opinions have been set forth in another memorandum ?—Yes, that is so.
I understand that you are a close student of these questions ?—I was 2 years before, but since I have been practising of course I have not been able to give sufficient attention to the very recent developments in currency and so probably my facts and figures might sometimes be rather out of date, but I should be able to tackle any point from the theoretical side of the subject, I presume.
You have been a student of political science ?—I was a Professor at the Sydenham College of Science for two years and I have written a book on the Problem of the Rupee.
I should like to ask you a few questions to elucidate a few individual contributions which you make to the subject in the course of your memorandum. In sub-paragraph(i) of paragraph 2 you commence with the statement : “A pure gold standard is stable because the value of gold in circulation is so large” and so on. What are you referring to as “a pure gold standard” in that connection ?—A pure gold standard means a gold currency as the standard of value.
A currency consisting of gold ?—Largely.
Supplemented by some form of token currency ?— By some form of token currency, yes.
*Report of the Royal Commission on Indian Currency and Finance, Vol. IV, Minutes of Evidence, pp. 313-22.