Viceroy: Lord Hardinge
Silver rupee, Presidency Banks, and money drawn on India from London.
Bank of Bengal rate
5.95%
+0.53 pts on 1912
Bank of Bombay rate
5.92%
+0.87 pts on 1912
Bank of Madras rate
6.65%
+0.6 pts on 1912
failed · 1 January 1913
"Many of these have not yet recovered from the horrible catastrophes of 1913 and the following years, although some of them have successfully weathered all storms"
ReportedPeer-reviewed. Source: SHIRRAS1920 p.386
failed · 20 September 1913
72 branches; ~Rs 1.25 crore of deposits (per BAN1940)
Failure of the People's Bank, the trigger of the 1913 banking crisis in Northern and Western India
VerifiedOfficial record. Source: BAN1940; STBI1926 1915 issue
failed · 1 November 1913
Failure of the only purely Indian bank with a London branch
VerifiedOfficial record. Source: STBI1926 1915 issue; BAN1940
failed · 1 January 1913
14 banks; Rs 35.27 lakh paid-up
Banks failing in calendar 1913 with aggregate paid-up capital Rs 35,27,000
VerifiedOfficial record. Source: STBI1926 1916 issue
Banking · failed
annual counts and capital, 1913–1951
RBI BMS 1954 Table 22, "Bank Failures, Number and Capital, All-India and by State, Annual, 1913–1951", printed p.279, recovered as a page image. Columns are Number of banks / Authorised / Subscribed / Paid-up in rupees, all-India and then by State, with the footnote "Relating to Indian Unions from August 16, 1947"
VerifiedOfficial record. Source: RBI, Banking and Monetary Statistics of India (1954), Table 22, printed p.279 = (archive.org)
failed · 1 October 1913
Rs 1 crore liability
The largest pearl merchants in Bombay failed with an estimated liability of Rs 1 crore.
ReportedPeer-reviewed. Source: Amiya Kumar Bagchi, The Evolution of the State Bank of India, Vol. 2, ch. 17, p. 501 (archive.org)
run · 1 November 1913
Rs 90 lakh paid out in cash
In the run that followed the fall of the People's Bank of Lahore (September 1913) and the Credit Bank of India in Bombay (1 November 1913), the Indian Specie Bank "paid out in cash Rs. 90 lakhs in a few weeks". The bank went into liquidation "in or about the month of December 1913".
ReportedPeer-reviewed. Source: Muranjan, Modern Banking in India, pp. 310–311; Narottam Morarji Gokaldas v. The Indian Specie Bank, Bombay High Court, 4 April 1917, (1917) 19 Bom LR 615 (indiankanoon.org)
failed · 1 September 1913
deposits ~Rs 30 lakh
Closed within nine days of the People's Bank. Authorised capital Rs 5 lakh, paid-up Rs 1.76 lakh, reserves Rs 75,000, deposits about Rs 30 lakh.
ReportedPeer-reviewed. Source: Bagchi, Vol. 2, ch. 17, p. 493
failed · 1 November 1913
~Rs 5 lakh of window-dressed current accounts
The Credit Bank of India, Bombay, collapsed on 1 November 1913. Its manager, Jaffer Joosab, admitted at trial that about Rs 5 lakh out of roughly Rs 7 lakh shown as current accounts "was made up of mere paper entries; Mistry taught me this window-dressing and said it was not illegal and many banks were doing it. The account and balance-sheets were prepared by my staff under instructions from the auditor."
ReportedPeer-reviewed. Source: Muranjan, Modern Banking in India, p. 301
failed · 1 September 1913
A bank failure at Lahore in September 1913, recorded by Muranjan as the opening of the sequence that ended with the Credit Bank and the Specie Bank. Bank not named in the passage read; not to be guessed at.
UnconfirmedPeer-reviewed. Source: MURANJAN, Modern Banking in India, 3rd edn 1952, ch. 21
Indian joint-stock banks (class)
45 per cent of the class's paid-up capital
All the failures of 1913, 1914, 1915 and 1916 were confined to Indian joint-stock banks; the total paid-up capital of the failed banks amounted to 45 per cent of the total paid-up capital of all Indian joint-stock banks
VerifiedOfficial record. Source: STBI1926` 1917 issue, introductory memorandum
Indian joint-stock banks (class)
161 banks; ~Rs 6.5 crore
VerifiedOfficial record. Source: ICBEC1931 ch. II; JB1945
Indian Specie Bank · Invalid Date
Rs 30~40 lakh
During the 1913–14 crisis the bank was "receiving considerable backing from its 'native state patrons'"; one director, the Thakore Sahib of Morvi, "alone had granted the bank some Rs 30 or Rs 40 lakh against shares of a certain mill". Deposits of about Rs 90 lakh were withdrawn in a month
ReportedPeer-reviewed. Source: Amiya Kumar Bagchi, The Evolution of the State Bank of India, Vol. 2 (archive.org)
Credit Bank, Bombay · scandal · 1 November 1913
Failed; its manager admitted that large sums had been represented "with mutual consent" as lying with the Indian Specie Bank on the Credit Bank's behalf, which he described as "a legitimate form of window-dressing".
ReportedPeer-reviewed. Source: MURANJAN, Modern Banking in India, 3rd edn 1952, ch. 21
Indian currency and finance
Appointed 1913, reported 1914 (a few months before the war). Generally endorsed the exchange-value policy since 1893 and recommended on the use of gold as currency, minting gold in India, development of the note issue, use of Government balances in India and England, constitution and location of the Gold Standard and Paper Currency Reserves, the India Office financial organisation, and a State/Central Bank. Its implementation was postponed at the outbreak of war
VerifiedOfficial record. Source: BS1920 para 5 (summarising CHAMB1914); CHAMB1914 signature page (members: Austen Chamberlain (chairman), Faber, Kilbracken, Robert Chalmers, Ernest Cable, S. B. Broacha, J. Begbie, R. W. Gillan, J. M. Keynes, H. N. Gladstone; secretary Basil P. Blackett), dated 6 August 1913
exchange rate
Description of the pre-war system that the war destroyed: the British sovereign and half-sovereign were unlimited legal tender for Rs 15 and Rs 7½; the Government undertook to issue rupees for sovereigns at that rate (1s 4d); the Secretary of State stood ready to sell Council drafts without limit at 1s 4d and would not sell below 1s 3½d, the situation below that being met by Reverse Councils drawn on the Gold Standard Reserve. The maintenance of the fixed relation depended "not upon the import and export of gold, but upon the action of the Secretary of State and the Government of India", hence "not a gold standard but a gold exchange standard"
VerifiedOfficial record. Source: BS1920 paras 6-7
Joint-stock banks
The general company law under which Indian joint-stock banks were registered. BAN1940: "It was only in a few matters that the Act distinguished between banks and other companies and contained half a dozen special regulations applicable to banks only."
VerifiedPeer-reviewed. Source: BAN1940
Indian finance and currency; note issue; gold exchange
Royal Commission on Indian Finance and Currency: final report 1914, minutes of evidence 1913, appendices 1913
VerifiedOfficial record. Source: dli.csl.519; dli.csl.2554; india.history.resource.117755
Indian joint-stock banks
The Government of India wrote to local governments, administrations and members of the mercantile community inviting opinion on proposed legislation governing the management of banks. "But even after five months no opinion had been forthcoming."
ReportedPeer-reviewed. Source: Bagchi, Vol. 2, ch. 17, p. 481
Punjab banks
An official committee headed by H. J. Maynard, Financial Commissioner of the Government of Punjab, was appointed at Lahore "to report upon the causes leading to the failure of banks in the Punjab". It found that "the collapse can be referred to two fundamental causes, inexperience and defective machinery inevitable to the starting of every new venture, and the lack of policy or remedial measures such as Government itself or a quasi-Government institution … might supply"; and it criticised the Bank of Bengal for refusing to advance to the Punjab National Bank even on Government paper. It also recorded that "the absence of a provincial Bank probably meant the downfall of sound Banks which might have been saved".
ReportedOfficial record. Source: Quoted in Bagchi, Vol. 2, ch. 17, pp. 511–512, from Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya's speech on the Imperial Bank of India Bill; the committee is cited by the ICBEC 1931 as "the Punjab Inquiry Committee, of 1913"
