By Matters India Reporter
Mumbai, March 1, 2019: The first-ever Euro Souvenir Indian notes were launched to celebrate 150th year of Mahatma Gandhi’s 150th birth anniversary.
Numisbing, a UAE-based specialized numismatics company, unveiled the limited-edition Zero Euro 12–notes commemorative series, with just 5000 notes of each design. The first two notes of the series were launched on February 27 and the rest sequentially until Oct 2.
Dubai-based Indian artist, Akbar Saheb, has designed the notes. He was the sole illustrator of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s book, Mann Ki Baat.
The Gandhi notes are based on incidents from Gandhi’s personal and political life.
“Besides the fact that these commemorative notes have a huge shelf value, the bigger reason for the initiative was to bring Mahatma Gandhi back to life using incidents that are more than just history lessons,” explained Ramkumar, founder of Numisbing and president of International Bank Note Society, Dubai Chapter.
“Only once before a similar initiative has been taken when the Indian government issued commemorative notes with the image of Gandhi in 1969 to celebrate his 100th birth anniversary. These notes were for public use as well,” he added.
He further explained: “Initially, we thought we would do just one commemorative note but then realised that Gandhi’s life is full of inspirations and confining all of them to one would not be possible, or fair to the great man. So we decided to stagger it into a series of 12. We are inaugurating the series by releasing two notes first, which will talk about two very important events in Mahatma Gandhi’s life.”
Steve, Co-Founder of Numisbing and Secretary of International Bank Note Society, Dubai Chapter, said the Zero Euro note is authorized by the European Central Bank and are printed in the same security printers which are used to print the Euro banknotes. “These notes carry all the security features of Euro banknote, except that they are all marked as ‘0’, and are tested to ensure they cannot enter circulation as legitimate financial currency,” he explained.
The first note discusses the three vows that young Mohandas Gandhi gave to his mother Puttlibai before he left for England for further studies in law. When Gandhi wished to continue his law studies in London, his mother was reluctant to send him since she felt that he may fall into bad habits. A guru then suggested that Puttlibai make Gandhi take three vows: One that he would not drink alcohol; two, that he would abstain from non-vegetarian food; and the third, that he will look upon other women as mothers or sisters.
The second note is based on the famous incident when Gandhi was thrown off a train at the Pietermaritzburg Railway Station, South Africa in 1893, when he refused to move from a “whites-only” compartment. Despite being afraid, he stood his ground, and history says that this was the moment that Gandhi began his non-violence movement that eventually proved to be a critical factor in gaining independence for India from the British.