100 Rupees First War of Independence

Issued to mark the 150th anniversary of the 1857 uprising — called the Sepoy Mutiny by the British and the First War of Independence by the Indian government — this coin reflects a historiographical argument that India has been having with its colonial past since partition. The naming itself is political: Jawaharlal Nehru's government formally adopted the "First War of Independence" framing in the 1950s, a deliberate recontextualization of what Victorian-era accounts had long dismissed as a mutiny of disgruntled soldiers.

The .500 fineness is notably low for a commemorative silver issue, a cost-driven compromise that became common for Indian commemoratives of this period.