India P109 10 Rupees 2024 UNC—Sun Temple Chariot with Sundial Wheels

• Variety: Signature: Shaktikanta Das (SD), Governor, Reserve Bank of India (no letters assigned for particular years or signatures). You receive a random serial number starting with letters A, B, N or S
• Color: Chocolate brown
• Front:
  • Portrait of Mahatma Gandhi
  • Ashoka Pillar
  • Telescoping serial number
• Back:
  • Chariot Wheel of the Konark Sun Temple (13th century CE, c. 1250)
  • Denomination in 15 Indian languages (Assamese, Bengali, Gujarati, Kannada, Kashmiri, Konkani, Malayalam, Marathi, Nepali, Odia, Punjabi, Sanskrit, Tamil, Telugu, Urdu)
  • Swachh Bharat (Clean India) emblem
• Security Features:
  • Watermark: Mahatma Gandhi and electrotype ‘10’
• Currency: Indian Rupee (INR), 1957–date (decimalized)
• Denomination: 10 Rupees
• Composition: Paper
• Size: 123 × 63 mm
• Printer: Security Printing and Minting Corporation of India (SPMCIL)
• Country: India — British India (colonial era–1947); Dominion of India (1947–1950); Republic of India (1950–present)

Mahatma Gandhi

The Face of Every Indian Banknote

Mohandas Gandhi (1869–1948) — universally known as Mahatma, meaning “Great Soul” — has appeared on every Indian banknote since 1996, when the Reserve Bank of India introduced the Mahatma Gandhi Series to replace the earlier Ashoka Pillar series. His portrait, drawn from a photograph taken in 1946, is one of the most reproduced images in the world.

Gandhi’s role in India’s independence from Britain is without parallel. Through decades of nonviolent resistance — the Salt March of 1930, the Quit India Movement of 1942, hunger strikes, and mass civil disobedience — he mobilized hundreds of millions of people and ultimately made British rule untenable. Assassinated on 30 January 1948, just months after independence, he became the defining moral figure of the 20th century’s decolonization era, influencing movements from the American Civil Rights movement to anti-apartheid activism in South Africa.

The Konark Sun Temple

A Chariot Frozen in Stone

The reverse of this note features the iconic chariot wheel of the Konark Sun Temple — a 13th-century Hindu temple in Odisha, eastern India, built around 1250 CE by King Narasimhadeva I of the Eastern Ganga Dynasty. The entire temple is conceived as a colossal chariot of the sun god Surya, with 24 elaborately carved stone wheels — each roughly 3 metres in diameter — and seven horses pulling it across the sky.

The wheels are not merely decorative: each is a functioning sundial, its spokes casting shadows that allow the time of day to be read with remarkable precision. A UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1984, Konark is one of India’s most celebrated architectural achievements, and its wheel has become a national symbol — the same wheel that appears at the center of the Indian national flag as the Ashoka Chakra.

The Ashoka Pillar

Symbol of the Indian Republic

The Ashoka Pillar on the obverse references the Lion Capital of Ashoka — a sculpture originally atop a pillar erected by Emperor Ashoka at Sarnath around 250 BCE, at the site where the Buddha first taught. Adopted as the national emblem of India upon the republic’s founding in 1950, it appears on all Indian currency, official documents, and government seals. Its four lions, standing back to back, represent power, courage, confidence, and pride.

A Final Reflection: The World’s Largest Democracy in Your Pocket

India’s 10 Rupee note is one of the most widely circulated banknotes on earth — issued in a country of 1.4 billion people, in a currency used daily by more humans than any other. The New Mahatma Gandhi Series, introduced from 2016 onward with updated security features and chocolate brown coloring, represents the Reserve Bank of India’s modernization of its currency while keeping faith with the visual language of the republic: Gandhi’s quiet gaze, the Ashoka lions, and the ancient wheel of Konark turning endlessly on the reverse.

For the collector, this note is both commonplace and profound — a piece of the everyday life of the world’s most populous nation, rendered in paper and ink.