UNC set: Jawaharlal Nehru

Cover

The set

1 rupee

5 rupee obverse

Reverse

Jawaharlal Nehru 20 rupee obverse

The 20 rupee is the rarest denomination in India as it exists only in five different UNC/proof sets. Jawaharlal Nehru set of 1989 is one set which has the 20 rupee coin in it. This denomination has never been circulated so far.

Reverse

Jawaharlal Nehru 100 rupee obverse

Reverse

1989 Jawaharlal Nehru UNC set mint mark(U)

This mint mark is unique for Indian coins as it is there only on the Jawaharlal Nehru UNC set of 1989. the "U" signifies UNC , though it can be easily mistaken to be the mint mark of some foreign mint. This set was minted in the Bombay mint.

Jawaharlal Nehru was the first and to date the longest serving president of independent India, from the independence in 1947 to his death in 1964. He was a leading figure in the Indian independence struggle. He was a charismatic and radical leader who advocated complete independence from foreign rule and self governance. He is also known as "the architect of modern India" and "pandit Nehru" where pandit is a honorific for a scholarly and learned person or a teacher. His birthday , which is on 14th November , is celebrated as children's day in India. He has written a book titled 'The discovery of India' which was aired on the Indian national television, DoorDarshan, as a series titled "Bharat Ek Khoj" in which he was portrayed by Roshan Seth, who portrayed Nehru in Richard Attenborough's Gandhi as well. Along with Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt and the Yugoslavian president Josip Broz Tito, he started the Non Aligned movement in 1955 in a world where USSR and USA were the two big powers and most of the countries were aligning themselves with either of the two, creating the atmosphere of an impending third world war(the situation is known as cold war). As of 2008, there were 118 members in the NAM, though one may say that with the fall of USSR, the situation of cold war is no more and maybe NAM is not relevant anymore.

Nehru was a big advocate of socialism and his major failure was on the defense front as first Pakistan was able to occupy a major part of Kashmir in 1947 succeeding the partition and he also severely miscalculated the intentions of China and the country's own military capabilities which were brutally exposed during the Sino-Indian war of 1962. His health started declining very quickly after that and he died of a heart attack in 1964.

The first commemorative coin of independent India was released on Nehru's death in 1964. In 1989, apart from this set from which the 1 rupee and 5 rupee coins were also released in circulation; a stamp was released in the erstwhile soviet union.

Nehru has recently received criticism from Jaswant Singh of BJP in a controversial book titled " Jinnah: India-partition-independence" in which he questioned Nehru's part in the partition and made a favourable view of Jinnah. Singh was later expelled from the BJP.