One man's obsession has created Bengaluru's Museum of Indian Paper Money

A few years ago, Rezwan Razack, now joint managing director of the Bengaluru-based Prestige Group, found a currency note in his grandfather’s iron safe. Razack stared at it long and hard because, though it was a Reserve Bank of India note, a rubber stamp on it read, curiously enough, “Pakistan note, Payment refused”. The idea of an Indian currency note from Pakistan fuelled a journey that has led to the opening of Rezwan Razack’s Museum of Indian Paper Money.

The note Razack found recalls a post-Partition period when currency notes for Pakistan were temporarily printed in India. This note has a place in his museum, as do the many that were printed in India and looked like Indian notes, but were meant to be legal tender in Burma (Myanmar), because that territory too was British-governed.  

Located on the second floor of the stately Prestige Falcon Towers on Bengaluru’s Brunton Road, the temperature-controlled archive is a trove of stories. Some of these evoke loud reactions during guided tours of the museum, especially the exhibits that showcase large denominations of money that were deliberately, neatly, cut in half. “Why would anyone tear up money!” exclaims a young woman. The answer is intriguing: while one half of the note was sent by post to the bank, the other half was to be taken in person to the bankers. The serial numbers on both were compared before the person was given silver in exchange for the currency. “Those were hard days [the 19th century] and thieves were aplenty. The thief could not know which bank you had sent the money to, but they could get the other half of the note from you. If you lost one of these halves, it was the bank’s discretion whether you would get half the money or no money at all,” the visitor is told.

Though there are museums around the country, such as the RBI Monetary Museum in Mumbai and the RBI Museum in Kolkata, which acknowledge India’s monetary history, the exclusive focus on paper currency distinguishes Razack’s enterprise from the others. It takes the audience from the time that India’s first banks printed notes in the late 18th century, only for that to stop when governance passed to the British crown, starting a new age of uniface (single side-printed) notes when India’s notes came from England, and finally to the establishment of a printing press in Nashik (in 1928) and the Reserve Bank of India (1935). 

The tour of exhibits moves chronologically, detailing how notes were printed in England and were shipped across in inclement weather, even confronting German U-boats during war times. Razack’s collection includes Indian currency notes from ill-fated vessels such as the ocean liner S S Egypt which collided with a cargo ship and went down in May 1922.

“Insurers had paid off the claim and given up on recovering anything from the ship. But bounty hunters kept trying because the ship was carrying gold bullion (and bars of silver). They finally succeeded in 1932 and thought they had hit double jackpot because of the currency they found,” says Razack. But the notes weren’t signed, since that was done after they reached India, and were therefore not valid currency. Whatever was not destroyed remains in the hands of a few collectors.

There’s also a collection of the yellow pamphlet-like notices which would be placed inside glucose tins and sold to help identify notes that were printed in India but meant for circulation outside. The paper had serial numbers listed for notes meant for Burma and, later, for Pakistan.

Other exhibits showcase cash coupons which replaced coins of small denominations that were issued in princely states during World War II, after metal turned into a precious commodity. There are also a few cash coupons meant exclusively for prisoners of wars brought to India from South Africa (Anglo-Boer Wars), Burma and Pakistan. “These people weren’t criminals. They couldn’t be forced to work so they were given cash coupons to motivate them to work. These could be exchanged for specific items in local canteens,” says Razack.

All the exhibits come from Razack’s personal collection. Along his obsessive journey, he has also managed to lend his name to two books on Indian currency — he co-authored The Revised Standard Reference Guide to Indian Paper Money in 2012 and wrote One Rupee: One Hundred Years 1917-2017.

The museum is so immersive that even its entry ticket (priced at Rs 100) is designed along the lines of the train tickets that were issued during the opening of the printing press in Nashik (the site was selected for its proximity to the railway line). Cream tomato soup, prawn curry, chicken Maryland, turkey and ham, pressed ox tongue, peach melba, and cheese, fruit and coffee were served to special guests, reveals a copy of the menu for the special event. Razack now plans to recreate the day as another special event and mark it with the same menu. 

A compelling storyteller in person, he hopes the museum will gain currency so that others too can participate in a somewhat obscure but nevertheless fascinating piece of India’s history.