Images of metal currency allegedly issued by the East India Company, the outfit that arrived on Indian shores for trade but ended up seizing control of large parts of the Indian subcontinent, have gone viral.

1.Please see for yourself,these coins were issued by the British East India Company.The coins clearly depict Hindu Gods & religious symbols,thus one can easily conclude that despite being the rulers they also knew that Hindu sentiments need to be respected.But after independence pic.twitter.com/D4Vn2NyUGq

RAJEEV NAMOCHAI (@RAJIV1959) April 11, 2018

Coins of East India Company, printed with Hindu Gods and Goddesses! It's so communal, wasn't it? @ggiittiikkaa@KiranKSpic.twitter.com/ux4HNOmMDh

sharan (@Sharan00) November 23, 2017

But Did the East India Company, that brought a two century long oppressive colonial rule to India, actually issue coins to honour Hindu Gods?

As the images of coins have broken the internet, a section of netizens claimed that "the British honoured the Hindu gods something the Congress never did".

Since one of the coins has Lord Ram on one side the war cry is more fierce Even Britishers gave respect to Hindu sentiments. But Indian Congress denied the existence of Shri Ram and made fun of Hindus.

Is there something more to the East India Company's divisive and expansionist past that Indians never knew of? The company received a Royal Charter from Queen Elizabeth on 31 December 1600 and its a chronicled fact that with an army of 2.6 lakh soldiers it indulged in most unfair practices to further the cause of the crown.

Did it try to trick the Indians by sugar coating the pill and issue its own currency with images of Indian gods?

Since netizens were encashing the coins, we decided to do a fact check. The images show that the coins were issued in year 1818 and 1839.

Sanjib Singh, the spokesperson of the National Museum in Delhi said, "East India Company did issue coins in India which were made of Corolina (Gold), Anglina (Silver), Cupproon (Copper) and Tinny (Tin). Across the world, till now there is absolutely no reference of coins with Hindu Gods inscribed on them."

Singh, who is also an archaeologist, said, "There is reference about coins with Pgoda and Venkateshwar Gods. South Indian coins have had Gods since the beginning."

Reserve Bank of India's website has a complete history of coinage in India. India has been one of the earliest issuers of coins in the world. Princely states such as Hyderabad, Faridkot and Udaipur issued their own coins.

Source: https://rbi.org.in/Scripts/mc_colonial.aspx

Source: https://rbi.org.in/Scripts/mc_colonial.aspx

Source: https://rbi.org.in/Scripts/mc_colonial.aspx

Blogger Kulraj Singh, in February 2009, called the coins in contention as fake. In fact, Singh posted the images of coins on his blog and the ones that are doing the rounds on the internet currently seem to have been tweaked from the pictures that the blogger posted.

Also, we can notice the images of contentious coins have misspelled the word Anna (formerly used currency unit). They have written it as Aana. There are several of these probably duplicate coins available for sale on e-commerce websites for as low as Rs199.

Source: https://rbi.org.in/Scripts/mc_british_GeorageVI.aspx

Numismatist Dr PV Bharat speaking about the possibility of these coins, said, "These types of coins with pictures of gods are made for the purpose of sale to foreign tourists. Whenever East India Company issued a coin it had their logo."

But did coins ever have the pictures of gods? "Temple tokens do have the images of god but they have no value and certainly dont have Anna written on them," Dr Bharat said.

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