In an obvious escalation of the language row, the Stalin government in Tamil Nadu has now dropped the Indian Rupee symbol ₹ from its official documents. In the budget for the financial year 2025-26, the government replaced the ₹ symbol with its equivalent Tamil script.
This move comes amid and the Tamil Nadu government’s opposition to the 3-language policy of the National Education Policy (NEP), which it calls Hindi imposition, even though Hindi is not made mandatory.
The Tamil Nadu budget document uses the ரூ symbol as the Rupee symbol in its budget document, which is the first character of the Tamil word for Rupee. The state govt has not made any comment on why it used its own currency symbol instead of the official symbol.
Notably, the ₹ symbol was adopted by the UPA govt in 2010 to replace the existing symbol Rs. symbol, as it is used as currency symbol by multiple countries. After the Indian govt decided to adopt a new currency symbol, a design competition was announced by the central govt to select a new symbol.
The design created by U Udaya Kumar was selected as the winning symbol, which combines the elements of Devanagari letter ‘र’ (ra) and the Latin capital letter ‘R’. The parallel lines on the symbol represents the tricolor and also depict an equality sign symbolizing the nation’s desire to reduce economic disparity.
The new symbol was subsequently incorporated into currency notes and coins, with the first series of coins bearing the ₹ symbol entering circulation on July 8, 2011.
The use of a separate currency symbol by Tamil Nadu government represents a major conflict of the state with the centre.
