1/2 Rupee - Chithira Thirunal Bala Rama Varma II

Chithira Thirunal Bala Rama Varma ascended the Travancore throne in 1931 at age eighteen, and his reign saw the kingdom's most consequential political rupture: the 1938 State Congress agitation demanding responsible government, met with brutal suppression by Divan C. P. Ramaswami Iyer. This 1937 issue predates that crisis by a year, struck while the administration still projected confident feudal normalcy. Travancore maintained its own currency until 1949, two years after Indian independence — one of the last princely states to surrender monetary autonomy to the Reserve Bank.