The political tussle over new currency symbol for Tamil Nadu
The Tamil Nadu government has taken to the fore, initiating a big political row, as it announced the replacing of the Indian rupee symbol with a Tamil letter Ru. The new design was released by Chief Minister MK Stalin on Thursday through the online media during the launch of the Budget 2025-26 logo. The opposition has come down heavily on this, and the Tamil Nadu BJP has gone to the extent of labeling it as “‘condemnable and laughable.”
The Irony Behind the Controversy
Yet, amid all the din comes one ironic twist: the earlier rupee symbol was, in fact, designed by a Tamilian, D. Udaya Kumar.
So Who is D. Udaya Kumar?
D. Udaya Kumar, a professor at IIT Guwahati, designed the Indian rupee symbol in 2010 during the tenure of Manmohan Singh. He is the son of N. Dharmalingam, an ex-DMK MLA from Tamil Nadu’s Rishivandiyam constituency.
His symbol design was one from among 3000 designs submitted from across the country for the rupee symbol, for which he was awarded ₹2.5 lakh. The design is a beautiful amalgamation of Indian and Roman scripts capital R and Devanagari Ra for “rupiah”. The two horizontal stripes at the top represent the national flag and also signify equal economic stability. The symbol was officially adopted by the Government of India on July 15, 2010.
D.Udaya Kumar has a Bachelor’s in Architecture and Master’s in Design (Visual Communication). After working as a senior designer and later as design head for Intelligent Computing CHIP, a monthly magazine, he pursued his PhD in Design at IIT Bombay. His expertise lies in visual communication, architecture, and Tamil typography.
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