India’s Gold Exchange Standard System in the Colonial Period and a Nationalist Businessman

The aim of this article is to investigate the nature of the controversy concerning India's monetary system discussed in 1919 by a committee established by the British government. In this article, we will focus our concern on D. M. Dalal, who was a nationalist businessman in Bombay and the sole Indian committee member. He wrote a minority report criticizing the British authority’s policy and proposing a gold coin standard system instead of the existing gold exchange standard system. We will examine why he proposed a gold coin standard system and how he combined this economic proposal with his political task of promoting India's autonomy. The conclusions will be as follows. Dalal's purpose was to offer an alternative plan against the rise of the exchange rate of the rupee and to show that where monetary supremacy would be was more significant than which monetary system would be adopted. His proposal implicitly included political criticism of colonial rule, and this was the main reason why his proposal was rejected in the committee dominated by the British members.