At the first Parliament of the World’s Religions, Swami
Vivekananda had said the following lines:
“I am a Hindu. I am sitting
in my own little well and thinking that the whole world is my little well. The
Christians sit in their little well and think the whole world is their well.
The Muslims sit in their little well and think that is the whole world.”
Nothing demonstrates the above lines better than the sudden
and irrational surge of jingoistic nationalism that seemed to engulf our
Foreign Minister, and by extension the country at large, when it became known
that Amazon was selling doormats with the Indian tricolor printed on them through
its North American e-stores. The entire nation went into a kind of
hyper-nationalistic frenzy, with the Foreign Minister going so far as to
threaten the deportation of all foreign Amazon officials in India, should the
doormats not be immediately withdrawn from their website.
The problem with this reaction, however, is that the
correlation of feet with something unclean or disrespectful is a uniquely
Indian (and specifically Hindu) concept. Hence we touch the feet of our elders
as a mark of respect, and avoid touching valuable things like books or money
with our feet. To point at or touch someone or something with one’s foot would
be considered a mark of disrespect in the Indian context.
However, like the fool sitting in his well in Swami Vivekananda’s
speech, we fail to take into account that this association of feet with
disrespect might not hold true in other countries, or for people belonging to
other cultures. Along with doormats sporting the colours of the Indian flag,
Amazon also sells doormats and carpets painted in the colours of several other
national flags, as well as various kinds of religious symbols like a Christian
cross or the Jewish Star of David. For people of other countries, having their
national flags displayed on their doormats is a matter of pride, as it is the
first thing a visitor sees of the house, even before entering, and it is a
visible sign of the resident’s devotion to his own country.
In attributing our own cultural preconceptions about the
significance of feet – and by extension doormats – to people who do not share
that culture and have no reason to abide by our cultural values, Sushma Swaraj,
and Indians by extension, have displayed the same narrow-minded blindness that
Swami Vivekananda had warned us about. To stand as a great nation on the world
stage, the youth of India must learn to climb out of the jingoistic well of
ignorance the politicians have dragged them into, and perceive the vast cosmos
that lies beyond.
