Upset Hindus and social activists on Twitter have notified the E-commerce giant Amazon and its founder Jeff Bezos of the doormats carrying the images of various Hindu deities and saints sold on its website, calling it highly inappropriate. To make things worse, Amazon has been caught with insensitive anti-Hindu products dozens of times over the last few years. The latest controversy with Hindus was that it was selling underwear with Hindu deity images. Until now, there has been no public statement from Jeff Bezos or Amazon with an official apology to Hindus.
American-Hindu community leader Rajan Zed, in a statement in Nevada today, said that it was shocking to visualize that Amazon.com, for its mercantile greed, apparently persuading the world to scrub/wipe the soles of their shoes before entering a building on the faces of gods which Hindus worshipped. Another American spiritual Hindu philosopher Pt.Gupta stated that although in the West they love to omit Hindu symbols in their Yoga studios while chanting ancient Hindu-religious songs, it’s now more accessible to find these Hindu symbols on doormats.
Amazon sells Doormats with Hindu Gods and Goddesses[/caption]In the ancient culture and spiritual faith of Hinduism, all Gods, Gurus and Symbols should be respected under the same tone. This means that you should never step on such images or deities, especially with dirty shoes or feet. In Hindu temples all men and women are required to remove their shoes before entering as a gesture of respect. Therefore, doormats can be seen symbolically as a very poor choice of product to put images on. After asking various Hindu leaders, many agreed that putting Hindu symbols on clothing like t-shirts and hats is okay.
Images of Hindu gods and goddesses depicted on the doormats sold at Amazon.com website—Shiva, Vishnu, Krishna, Ganesha, Venkateswara, Saraswati, Murugan, Durga-Hanuman, Padmanabha—were highly revered in Hinduism and were meant to be worshipped in temples or home shrines; and not for absorbing “water and dirt from shoes” or for sweeping on for cleaning or for drying wet feet and grabbing “dirt, dust and grime”. Inappropriate usage of Hindu deities or concepts for commercial or other agenda was not okay as it hurt the devotees, Zed, who is President of Universal Society of Hinduism, noted.
Hinduism was the oldest and third largest religion of the world with about one billion adherents and a rich philosophical thought and it should not always be walked over (in this case literally!). Amazon.com, Inc., a Fortune 500 company founded in 1994, and headquartered in Seattle (Washington, USA), claims to offer “Earth’s Biggest Selection”.
Many people around the World took to Twitter to share their opinions, for and against the doormat fiasco. Some tweets below:
Hindu Devas featured on DOOR MAT on Amazon, can we go any lower. https://t.co/3XMPNm9bT7
— Yogi Baba Prem Th.D (@YogiBabaPrem) June 4, 2016
Childish trend, #BoycottAmazon. Why just doormat, put gods on toilet paper, condoms. Our tradition, Hinduness too big to be belittled by it
— Abhijit Majumder (@abhijitmajumder) June 4, 2016
Hindus trend #BoycottAmazon over some random mat but don’t care when #KarnatakaFundsChurch with bags of their money. https://t.co/k9rsvARVur
— Sankrant Sanu ???? (@sankrant) June 4, 2016
Yes #BoycottAmazon , it has fashion to defame Hindus and Hindu gods , don’t have guts to do such things with others https://t.co/3pafFnc2UZ
— MAHENDRA JAIN (@mahendra3) June 4, 2016
Celebrating 3 years Anniversary by selling doormats featuring Hindu Gods? Are u reduced to this @JeffBezos? Congrats https://t.co/nvCP1jmdkk
— Varun Goyal (@vroomgoyal) June 5, 2016
Its always between the devils and the Deities . Devils would never have any respect towards others . So going against the deities definitely proves the Devils of the world who would surely pay for it .