Mangaluru: It seems that Amazon.com has not learnt its lesson the hard way in hurting sentiments of Indians. On January 11, the news of doormats with Indian flag on it was received by External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj and she wrote a scathing tweet against Amazon and got it removed from their site.
A little after, the news of Indian Tricolour on a pair of shoes and some shoe decoration also came to the fore. It is still on sale at Amazon.com and goes by the names “ADE Indian Flag Women’s Chukka canvas shoes M003”, priced at $ 43.99 (close to Rs. 3,000) and “Graphics and More India Indian Flag shoe sneaker shoelace charm decoration” for $ 4.49 (almost Rs. 300).
The recent controversy was that of the doormat with Indian flag on it sold on Amazon’s Canadian Website. The doormat product with Indian flag has been taken down after Sushma’s warning but Amazon has left the shoes and shoe decoration on the website. However, Sushma is yet to respond to this fresh issue.
Under the Prevention of Insults to the National Honours Act, disrespecting a National Flag is an offence punishable by three years in jail. Though Amazon has taken down the doormat with Indian flag on it, the United Kingdom and United States flag doormats are still online. Moreover, there are shoes with German, African, South African, Russian and five objectionable varieties of Jamaican flags.
