2017-02-01 Wed

India is a country of many languages and traditions. The rich and varied cultural heritage of India is too difficult to ignore. And hence maybe that’s why the second issue of Green Underprint, Uniface banknotes of British India added two more languages to its language panel on 1st February 1901.

The language panel having six languages was seen on the Rs. Five banknotes. These notes were single sided and the reverse side, which was blank, could be used for accounting purposes. The notes were printed in England and the paper used was white, handmade, and moulded. The six languages were Urdu, Bengali, Telugu, Kaithi, Kannada and Tamil.

These notes were printed from 1901 to 1903. Later from 1903 Rs. 5 notes were universalised and could be encashed at any circle or sub-circle, irrespective of their office of issue, except Burma. And the underprint colour changed from green to red.

Even today we have many languages on our banknotes. It is definitely a unique way of honouring our varied cultures!