ABSTRACT
The assurance of fiscal autonomy, which was contained in the new British Indian constitution of 1920, was in striking contrast with the blatant manipulation of the Indian currency by the Secretary of State in the immediate post-war years. Many Indian nationalists interpreted the actions of the Secretary of State in terms of a conspiracy theory, accusing him of deliberately thwarting this fiscal autonomy in order to assert British interests. In fact much of what the Secretary of State did could be attributed to his helplessness in dealing with a situation that was no longer amenable to the usual measures for controlling the stability of the Indian currency.
