MUMBAI: Businessmen may blame global troubles or inept governance, but a Hindu guru has an alternative theory for the historic weakness of India's rupee: the newly adopted symbol for the currency is inauspicious.

Rajkumar Jhanjhari, an expert in the ancient Hindu doctrine of vastu shastra, has called for a new design, arguing that a line on the symbol has “slit the throat” of the rupee and sparked the country's financial gloom.

The rupee symbol, unveiled in 2010 during happier times for the Indian economy, is inspired by the letter “R” in the Roman alphabet and “Ra” from the ancient Devanagari script used in Hindi.

“India managed to withstand a severe global slump in 2009, before the symbol came up. One must ask why our growth rate is taking a beating now before rubbishing pleas for changing the symbol,” Jhanjhari told the Hindustan Times.

Data on Thursday showed India's economy grew just 5.3 per cent in January-March.—AFP