The government today said the RBI's move to buy 200 tonnes of gold from multilateral lending agency IMF provided a healing touch to the nation's pride that was dented about two decades back when the country sold its gold for a few hundred million dollars.

Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee said one should not read much into the RBI's purchase of gold from the International Monetary Fund, but added it is significant as it reminds of the days when India's sentiments were outraged.

"It has much more significance because for many of you it is not the remote past... How the sentiments of the country felt outraged when we had to pledge gold to Bank of England just for borrowing few hundred million dollars to maintain our essential import requirement," he said at the Economic Editors' Conference here.

The pledging of gold with Bank of England started during the Chandra Shekhar government some two decades back.

When contacted, Yashwant Sinha, Finance Minister in the Chandra Seshaker Cabinet, alleged that the then government had to pledge 20 tonnes of gold, because of "profligacy" by the former Rajiv Gandhi Government and "inaction" by the previous V P Singh government that led to balance of payments problems.

Sinha also claimed that his government pledged 20 tonnes of gold which was smuggled into the country, while the successive Narasimha Rao government pledged 48 tonnes of RBI gold with Bank of England.

Mukherjee added the purchase does not mean that "we don't prefer the dollar any more or like gold any better."

The Finance Minister said his advice to the RBI Governor would be that "if you are in a position keeping in view the availability of the foreign exchange you buy that (gold)."

"We bought it because we have money, we have forex reserves... Forex reserves shows confidence of investors in Indian economic resilience... Despite global tremor, India and Chinese economies continued to survive," he said.