Matthew Patay's
Note of the Month

September 2003

Map and flag images provided by Graphic Maps

This month's featured note is from India.
The denomination is 50 Rupees and the Standard Catalog of World Paper Money (SCWPM) Number is P-90a.

The note is undated but was issued in (1997).

(obverse)
The banknote is black and purple on multicolored underprint.  Mahandas K. Gandhi (Oct 2, 1869 to Jan 30, 1948) is at right.  Mahandas K. Gandhi was an Indian Statesman, activist leader of nonviolent protest and a strong advocate of human rights

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The following information was obtained from EngagedPage.Com:

A Brief History of Mohandas K. Gandhi

by Richard Attenborough

Mohandas K. Gandhi was born in 1869 to Hindu parents in the state of Gujarat in Western
India. He entered an arranged marriage with Kasturbai Makanji when
both were 13 years old. His family later sent him to London to study law, and in 1891 he was
admitted to the Inner Temple, and called to the bar. In Southern
Africa he worked ceaselessly to improve the rights of the immigrant Indians. It was there that
he developed his creed of passive resistance against injustice,
satyagraha, meaning truth force, and was frequently jailed as a result of the protests that he
led. Before he returned to India with his wife and children in 1915, he
had radically changed the lives of Indians living in Southern Africa.

Back in India, it was not long before he was taking the lead in the long struggle for
independence from Britain. He never wavered in his unshakable belief in
nonviolent protest and religious tolerance. When Muslim and Hindu compatriots committed
acts of violence, whether against the British who ruled India, or against
each other, he fasted until the fighting ceased. Independence, when it came in 1947, was not a
military victory, but a triumph of human will. To Gandhi's despair,
however, the country was partitioned into Hindu India and Muslim Pakistan. The last two
months of his life were spent trying to end the appalling violence which
ensued, leading him to fast to the brink of death, an act which finally quelled the riots. In
January 1948, at the age of 78, he was killed by an assassin as he walked
through a crowed garden in New Delhi to take evening prayers. End of Attenborough's
summary

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(reverse)
The Indian Parliament House is located at left center.  The following information was obtained from The Indian Parliament Homepage.

Parliament House is a massive circular edifice 560 feet (170.69 metres) in diameter. Its
circumference is one-third of a mile 536.33 metres and it covers an area of nearly six acres (24281.16 square metres) . The open verandah on the first floor is fringed with a colonnade of 144 creamy sandstone columns each 27 feet (8.23 metres) high. The building has twelve gates
among which Gate No. 1 on the Sansad Marg is the main gate.

The building was designed by two famous architects-Sir Edwin Lutyens and Sir Herbert Baker--who were responsible for the planning and construction of New Delhi. 

The Foundation stone of Parliament House was laid on the 12th February, 1921 by H.R.H. The Duke of Connaught. The construction of the building took six years and the opening ceremony was performed on the 18th January,1927 by the then Governor-General of India, Lord Irwin.

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