5 Rupees

The Reserve Bank of India was only three years old when this note was issued, having been established in 1935 to take over currency functions from the colonial Controller of Currency. J.B. Taylor served as the second Governor, an appointment that placed a British official at the helm of what was nominally India's own central bank — a political arrangement that would remain contentious through the final decade of the Raj.

Printing at Nasik rather than in Britain marks a meaningful shift. Earlier Indian currency had relied heavily on overseas production; the Security Printing Press at Nasik represented a deliberate move toward domestic capacity, though the institutional framework remained firmly colonial in character through Partition and beyond.