Signifying the Nation Commemorative Coins, Nationhood and Politics of Memory

This paper attempts to examine the history of commemorative coins, first minted in 1964 in Bombay. Since then they have been minted at four mints, namely Hyderabad, Noida, Calcutta and Bombay. The paper seeks to investigate the genesis of commemorative coins in Independent India and also examine the figures and events that have been commemorated through them. It looks at commemorative coins as official artefacts of the nation-state which enshrines its heroes and fashions a genealogy of historical personalities and events through commemoration. Through an examination of commemorative coins, the paper delves into the politics of commemoration and memory. The paper proposes that the very act of commemoration through coins represents a form of official or institutionalized memory. It analyses how the dialectic of official remembrance and amnesia shapes the politics of commemoration and how gradually some historical personages and events become a part of the memory of the nation-state through this very dialectic.