Gold in India is simultaneously a financial asset, a religious offering, and a social currency — the country is the world's second-largest consumer of gold, ho…
The Rigveda, composed circa 1500 BCE, contains repeated references to gold — called 'hiranya' — as both divine ornament and measure of a ruler's legitimacy. Priests rece…
Kautilya's Arthashastra, written circa 300 BCE under the Mauryan Empire, dedicates entire chapters to gold purity standards, state-run assaying, and penalties for adulte…
After the transfer of power from the East India Company to the British Crown in 1858, the systematic extraction of Indian resources — including gold, silver, and agricul…
When India became independent on 15 August 1947, the Reserve Bank of India (established 1935) held approximately 200 tonnes of gold — a fraction of what the subcontinent…
By June 1991, India's foreign exchange reserves had fallen to barely $1.2 billion — enough to cover just three weeks of imports. The newly sworn-in government of Prime M…
The Gold Control Act of 1968 — which had prohibited citizens from holding gold bars and limited jewellers' stocks — was repealed in 1990. But the decisive liberalisation…
In 2012–13, India imported approximately 1,000 tonnes of gold worth nearly $54 billion, making gold the country's second-largest import after crude oil. This surge — dri…
On 5 November 2015, the Government of India — through the Reserve Bank of India — issued the first tranche of Sovereign Gold Bonds (SGBs), priced at ₹2,684 per gram. The…
From 23 June 2021, the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) made hallmarking of gold jewellery mandatory across India — initially in 256 districts, expanding to all district…
By 2022, Indian investors held over ₹20,000 crore in Gold Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) listed on the NSE and BSE, with folios nearly tripling post-pandemic as smartphone…
In April 2025, 24-karat gold prices on the Multi Commodity Exchange crossed ₹1,00,000 per 10 grams — a psychologically and economically significant threshold that made I…
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