India and the “र”
It’s not just about symbology when a nation is in search of a symbol for its currency. Having a unique symbol for the nation’s currency is a pride for the nation, an exclusive rank and above all, a new beginning in the trading arena.
From ages, India has been using the characters “RS” to denote the Indian currency. Though many countries have Rupee as their currency, the need for a specific symbol for Indian rupee did not become visible because, other than India, very few “RUPEE” nations were part of the international trade. After partition, Pakistan also started using rupee and as time passed, countries like Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal entered the league and it became a necessity for India to have a currency symbol of its own.
With this, Government of India launched a campaign to create a symbol for the Indian Rupee. Finally five symbols were shortlisted and one among these would be picked up as the Symbol for rupee.
After so much of rummage, finally the cabinet ministry approved the symbol as the Rupee symbol for Indian currency. The new rupee sign is a fusion of Devanagari letter “र” (starting letter of Rupee in Hindi) and English letter “R” without the vertical line). It is also said that the 2 horizontal parallel lines are marked as the reference to the tri color flag of India. But it is noteworthy that in international trade, currency symbols are not used. Instead a unique currency code is issued to every country and that is being used. E.g. INR for Indian Rupee, USD for USA Dollar, EUR for the Euro and so on.
We’re already catching a glimpse of this beautiful logo in most of the national dailies and price tags of various products in the market. Very soon will be globally recognized symbol. We neither will be using this in our day to day life nor its gonna make any difference to us, but its every Indian’s responsibility to appreciate all the good thing that happen to us. A great person has said “"We owe a lot to the Indians, who taught us how to count, without which no worthwhile scientific discovery could have been made."
Let’s take some time to welcome this beautiful, flawless s character to the world. Let’s hope it brings good luck with it and help India battle all its problems.
