Indian Five rupee coins -VI

5 rupee, Dadabhai Naoroji

Dadabhai Naoroji helped lay the foundation of India's contemporary freedom struggle. At a time when the East India Company had systematically dismantled the nationalistic co- operation between the princely states of India, rose to prominence Dadabhai Naoroji, a peerless patriot who defined the modern Indian freedom struggle.

Dadabhai was born on September 4th, 1825 to a poor Parsi family in Bombay. His father, Naoroji Palanji Dordi, died when Dadabhai was only 4 years old. Dadabhai was brought up by his illiterate mother Maneckbai who gave Dadabhai the best English education possible. As a student, Dadabhai had a knack for mental mathematics and went on to distinguish himself in Mathematics and English at the Elphinstone Institution (now College) in Bombay. So impressed were his peers that one professor called him the "promise of India." Another offered to pay half the expenses for Dadabhai to study abroad. His Parsi elders refused to pay the other half of the expenses out of fear that Dadabhai would convert to Christianity and marry an Englishwoman.

On completion of his education, Dadabhai was appointed the Head Native Assistant Master at the Elphinstone Institution and went on to become the first Indian Professor of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy. Dadabhai entered the political fray in 1852. The East India Company acquired a 20 year lease to "manage" India from the British Government in 1833. The Company applied for renewal of the lease in 1853. Dadabhai strongly opposed the renewal of the lease and organized large meetings and sent petitions to the British Government in England to deny the Company a renewal. Even though the British Government did renew the Company's lease, his petitions dispelled a lot ignorance regarding India.

Dadabhai felt that the British misrule of India was because of ignorance of the way of life and needs on the Indian people. To remedy this he felt that he must educate the Indian masses of their rights and he workeed towards this end.

Dadabhai wanted to win friends and sympathizers for India. He joined several learned societies, delivered many speeches and wrote articles on the plight of India. He founded the East Indian Association on December 1st, 1866. The association was comprised of high ranking officers from India and people who had access to Members of the British Parliament. Dadabhai had become the unofficial ambassador of India.

Dadabhai was elected to the British Parliament in 1892 from Central Finsbury as the Liberal party candidate. This made it possible for Dadabhai to work for India from within! He got a resolution passed for holding preliminary examinations for the I.C.S. in India and England simultaneously and also got the Wiley Commission, the royal commission on India expenditure, to acknowledge the need for even distribution of administrative and military expenditure between India and England.

Dadabhai's efforts were rewarded in 1866 when the Secretary of State for India agreed to appoint 9 Indians out of 60 to the Indian Civil Service (I.C.S.) by nomination.

As the years passed, Dadabhai grew more and more disillusioned with the "fair-minded" British. After spending years collecting statistics, Dadabhai propounded the drain theory: "The inevitable consequence of foreign domination is the drain of wealth of the subject nation to the country of the rulers." Dadabhai proved that the average annual income of an Indian was barely Rs. 20. Examining the import and export figures for 37 years, he proved that India's exports exceeded its imports by Rs. 50 crores (approximately $135 million) annually.
Dadabhai was key to the establishment of the Indian National Congress (I.N.C.) founded by A.O. Hume. More importantly he averted a split in the Congress between the extremists like B.G. Tilak, B.C. Pal, and A. Ghosh and the moderates.

The "Grand Old Man of India," as Dadabhai was fondly known, can be viewed as the architect that laid the foundation of the Indian freedom struggle. He sacrificed his career and his family for India. He resigned his professorship to go to England to increase awareness of India in Britain. His only son and his mother died while he was in England. Dadabhai's methods for justice for India were always non-violent and constitutional.
Dadabhai died at the age of 92 on June 30th, 1917. 2 months later, the Minto Morley reforms were passed in the British Parliament granting much of what Dadabhai had been fighting for.

5 rupee Jagath Guru Narayan copper nickel

5 rupee Jagath Guru Narayan steel

Born in august 1856, the great sage Sree Narayana is the most revolutionary social reformer Kerala has produced.

The caste system was very much prevalant iin the society at that time, and both places of worship and institutes of learning were shut down for the 'avarnas', or the non-caste Hindus. The outcastes had to suffer various disabilities and humiliations like untouchability and unapproachibility.

Born to ‘Madan Asan’ and ‘Kutty Amma’, who endearingly called him ‘Nanu’,he had an ascetic bent of mind even from his childhood. When he was on the threshold of his youth, he had to undergo the ceremonial of a marriage due to parental pressure. But he never led a married life. At the age of twenty-three he left his family, renounced the pleasures of his world and wandered about as an “avadhutha” or mendicant, keeping his body and soul together by the alms he received from all sorts of people.

In those days, the foundation and consecration of a Hindu temple was the exclusive monopoly of the Brahmins. Sree Narayana’s first revolutionary act was the challenge thrown against this monopoly, by him consecrating temples. The first in this line was the temple dedicated to Shiva in Aruvippuram in 1888 A.D. In the temple is inscribed in Malayalam the following ideal, which epitomizes the Sree Narayana creed. “This is the ideal place Where all live in full harmony Without distinction of Caste or prejudice of Creed”. Within a few years Sree Narayana established a multitude of temples all over Kerala.

Long before the Temple Entry Proclamation of the Travancore government in 1936 whereby government temples were thro wn open to all Hindus, the temples established by Sree Narayana had become the asylum for worship, of the ‘lowlier of the lowliest’. Sree Narayana’s temples made no discrimination on the ground of caste, or creed. Unlike caste Hindu temples, they were open to both Hindus and non-Hindus.

He conducted a veritable campaign to eradicate the material disabilities of the downtrodden sections of Hindus. In 1903, Dr. P. Palpu, a devotee of Sree Narayana, founded a social organization called S.N.D.P Yogam (Sree Narayana Dharma Paripalana Yogam), the organization to promote the Dharma of Sree Narayana. This organization has done invaluable service in the epic struggle against caste system in Kerala. The organizers of S.N.D.P made Sree Narayana as its first President. The first General Secretary of S.N.D.P Yogam was Kumaran Asan, the peerless pioneer among modern Malayalam poets. Early in 1921 an All Kerala Fraternity Conference was held at Alwaye, and in this conference was delivered his eternal message “One Caste, One Religion, One God for Mankind”.

Sree Narayana is one of those rare men whose greatness was recognized even while they were alive. No better testimony is needed for this than the fact that Rabindranath Tagore and Mahatma Gandhi had visited and paid respects to him. Tagore, when he visited Kerala in 1922, interviewed the Guru and was deeply impressed that he remarked- “Among the ‘Paramahamsas’ alive in India now, there is none Who has lived such a life of purity as Swami Sree Narayana”.

When Mahatma Gandhi visited Sree Narayana in 1923, there was a heart-to-heart exchange of ideas between them and in their dialogue Sree Narayana made no secret of his strong feelings, about the need to eradicate the caste system root and branch.

The last great conference, which was convened at the behest of Sree Narayana, was the “All Religious Conference”, the Parliament of religions held at Alwaye in 1924. In this conference where eminent representatives of all great religions assembled, Sree Narayana proclaimed that the conference was convened “Not to argue and win but to know and to make known”. In a message which he delivered at the conference, he said ‘This great Parliament of religions makes it abundantly clear that the ultimate goal of all religions is same and so there is no need for followers of different religions to indulge in mutual conflict.”

The great Guru Sree Narayana attained Samadhi on September 20, 1928. Thus physically Guru disappeared, but spiritually he lives forever in the minds of mankind.

5 rupee Mother's health is child's health

With growing focus on health, the government made many different campaigns, especially to reduce the Infant mortality rate. Realizing that a pregnant mother's health and diet would have direct impact on the child's health, this coin was released as a part of a campaign to raise awareness on this particular health issue in pregnant mothers.