Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman dropped lines from a Kashmiri poem by literary giant Dina Nath Kaul Nadim during her 2020 Union Budget presentation in Parliament on Saturday.

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During the course of budget presentation, Sitharaman translated Kaul's Myon Watan (My Country) into Hindi.

The verses read:

Hamara vatan khilte huey Shalimar Bagh jaisa

Hamara vatan Dal jheel me khilte huey kamal jaisa

Naujawaanon ke garm khoon jaisa

Mera vatan, tera vatan, hamara vatan

Duniya ka sabse pyara vatan"

Our country like a blossoming Shalimar Bagh

Our country like a blossoming lotus in the Dal Lake

Like the hot blood of the youth

My country, your country, our country

The world's best country

Sitharaman's use of the poetic verse in a Union budget isn't new. During her maiden budget last year, she read lines from Tamil classic "Purananooru", which is dated from before the common era.

"I find wisdom in a line from 'Purananooru' which is a Sangam time Tamil literature piece, a Tamil Sangam era work and this is done by (poet) Pisiranthaiyar."

Amid a struggling Indian economy, the budget this year is being closely tracked with eyes trained on the government's initiatives to revive the economy which slumped to a meagre 4.5 percent growth in the September quarter last year, the lowest in over six years.

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First Published:Feb 1, 2020 11:49 AM IST