India’s biggest icon cannot be just the Tricolour or Mahatma Gandhi’s image. Rather it is India’s great knowledge tradition that pleads for tolerance, peace, wisdom, and friendliness. It is this tradition that helps create icons like Gandhi and blesses us with a proud symbol like the Tricolour. By threatening one of the world’s largest e-tailers, Amazon, publicly for being “flippant about Indian symbols and icons,” Economic Affairs secretary Shaktikanta Das has thus abused India’s biggest icon.

Tolerance doesn’t mean being voluntarily at the receiving end always. But it is about giving the opposition a fair chance for making a correction. In a series of tweets against Amazon on Sunday, Das probably forgot this meaning of tolerance and showed how arrogant an Indian bureaucrat can get on his day. Consider his tweet: “Amazon,better behave. Desist from being flippant about Indian symbols & icons. Indifference will be at your own peril.”

This tweet came after reports showed Amazon selling slippers with Gandhi’s image. This was another shock from the e-tailing giant after it was found that the company’s Canadian’s unit was selling Tricolour doormats. Union Minister of External Affairs had already threatened Amazon over Tricolour doormats and the company had not only tendered an apology but also removed the item from its site.

Even as Swaraj’s twitter warning to Amazon threatened to break into a diplomatic crisis, for once it was okay. But threatening the company again on social media, and that too by a bureaucrat is not the way sensitive issues like this should be dealt with.

Amazon sells millions of products. Only recently the company has faced rebuke for selling products that mock national symbols of a country. To deal with this, Das could have simply issued a statement asking Amazon to remove all products mocking Indian symbols and then followed it up with action if the company had not done so.

However, by threatening Amazon publicly, Das not only hit Amazon’s brand image but also showed how bureaucrats, or even politicians, can defame India’s image as a business-friendly country on social media without even showing they know the actual impact of their words.

Realising his mistake, Das soon clarified he made the comment against Amazon in his personal capacity as the citizen of India. “Comment on amazon was as a citizen of India as I felt strongly about it. Nothing more should be read into it. Remain committed to economic reforms, ease of doing business & open trade.Sometimes get touchy when our icons are involved,” he tweeted.

But, can people like Das, holding such high positions, afford to have two views — one for self, and one for the country. Amazon is not “terror state” Pakistan. Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself doesn’t believe that people in public offices should have dual characters.

For Das, hence, it would be better to keep quiet, maybe take some advice before going all out against someone on social media or may quit if he can’t handle his emotions.