100 Rupees Lokmanya Bal Gangadhar Tilak

Issued to mark the 150th birth anniversary of Bal Gangadhar Tilak, the Pune-born lawyer and nationalist who turned the Ganesh Chaturthi festival into a mass political mobilization against British rule in the 1890s — a calculated move to circumvent colonial prohibitions on public assembly. The British imprisoned him three times, and his 1908 sedition trial produced a six-year sentence in Mandalay that made him more influential in absentia than most politicians managed in person.

The .500 fineness is characteristic of Indian commemorative silver from this period, the Reserve Bank having never adopted the higher purities standard elsewhere.