1 Anna Deoli; Internment Camp

Deoli, in Rajasthan, was a British internment camp used primarily to detain civilians of enemy-alien status during the Second World War — most of them ethnic Germans, Italians, and Japanese residents of British India who had been living and working in the subcontinent for years, some for decades. The camp scrip series, of which this is the lowest denomination, was produced to allow controlled internal commerce while preventing internees from holding or accessing official currency. Production was entirely local, which accounts for the crude, almost improvised character of the printing.

Campbell's reference 5251 places this within a documented but poorly-studied series. Surviving examples from Deoli are genuinely uncommon — the camp population was limited, the notes were never redeemable outside the wire, and most were presumably destroyed or discarded at the war's end.