Chennai: By replacing a Tamil letter for the official rupee sign in the state budget emblem for 2025–26, the Tamil Nadu government has drawn criticism. This action has escalated the continuous linguistic conflict between the central government and the state. The logo now shows the Tamil letter “ru,” the first letter of the word “Rubaai,” which stands for Tamil rupees.
Designer of the Indian rupee symbol and IIT Guwahati professor D. Udaya Kumar has removed himself from the debate. Kumar pointed out that his father, N. Dharmalingam, was a DMK MLA; he observed no correlation between this and the state government’s logo modification decision. He underlined that the government alone decides whether or not to change the emblem; he has no personal involvement in this process.
Kumar initially designed the rupee symbol for a nationwide competition in 2010, and the UPA government formally approved it. His design, which blends Roman capital ‘R’ with Devanagari ‘Ra,’ won him an award of ₹2.5 lakh. From its acceptance, the emblem has been extensively applied all throughout India.
The central government has criticised the Tamil Nadu government’s choice, calling it “regional chauvinism,” which compromises national unity. Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman On the other hand, the DMK government sees this as an attempt to uphold Tamil identity and oppose what it considers a Hindi imposition.