Hello! My Name is KHAN!

Hindi film actor Shah Rukh Khan was detained at America’s Newark Liberty International Airport on Saturday for a couple of hours for interrogation and later released when the Indian consulate vouched for him. This has created uproar in the country which was further aggravated by the actor’s comment that he was treated shabbily because his last name happened to be ‘Khan’. I think the people of this country who are renowned for loving the two Cs; Cinema and Cricket, overreacted and there were demonstrations and protest and comments like ‘if the same was done to Hillary Clinton’, that it was deliberately done to spite us, etc.

I wonder where was their patriotism when in July former president A.P. Abdul Kalam was frisked at New Delhi Airport by U.S. based carrier Continental Airlines. When this was brought out in public the concerned airlines put in their apologies and the matter was done away with. There was no demonstration or protest of this magnitude, come to think of it, this happened in our own capital city, New Delhi. In April last year the then finance minister P. Chidambaram was frisked when he was leaving Washington after attending the meetings of the World Bank and the IMF,

It is not as if the people from the film fraternity always got away smoothly either. Earlier this year actor Neil Nitin Mukesh was detained ostensibly because he was too fair to be an Indian. Ironically he was visiting to shoot for the film ‘New York’. Irrfan Khan was detained twice in America when he had gone to receive awards for ‘Namesake’ and second time when he had gone to receive an award for ‘Slumdog Millionaire’. Kamalhasan was detained because of his name, last year.

So why the brouhaha when Shah Rukh Khan was detained? The US immigration authorities also gave an explanation for it. They denied that he was singled out because of his name or Asian identity. The allegations “happen to be incorrect,” US Customs and Border Protection spokesman Elmer Camacho said, adding Khan was inspected because his baggage had not arrived, and as part of the inspection process was to examine the baggage but his bags were not available because of the airlines not loading it. “His documents and papers were checked, which were found to be in correct order,” Camacho told PTI. After a “normal” check at the airport, Khan was taken to a different room where he was waiting for his turn since many other people were already there. “The entire process ended in a little over one hour,” the spokesman said. The procedure, he said, was handled in a “professional manner” and there was no evidence of Khan being pointed out because of his name or Asian identity. . Later in Chicago, where he had gone to take part in the South Asian Carnival on the occasion of India’s Independence Day, Shah Rukh Khan told PTI that “I think it is a procedure that needs to be followed. But it is an unfortunate procedure.” Asked whether he would seek an apology for the incident, the actor replied in the negative. In Kolkata on Sunday, cricketer Harbhajan Singh called it a “normal affair” and that this happens to him and his colleagues all over the world, and that the media was creating a fuss.

What I find interesting is the point that we are over looking: Is this not the right manner to maintain a country’s security? After all Shah Rukh Khan may be a famous celebrity in India but in another country which is not fed a daily diet of Indian cinema, there can be a mix-up, especially as security should be a top priority for any country. I suppose this is the sort of security which has saved the US from a plethora of terrorist attacks. Everyone should let themselves be subjected to security test for that is the only way to staunch the terrorists. Al Gore was recently screened twice but he did not make a noise about it. If the general people don’t help in maintaining the security of a country then how can you expect a bunch of officials to do it all? It does not become of us to criticize any actions taken for the security of a country as we have suffered so miserably by terrorist attacks so often that we ourselves think twice before going anywhere. If we had such a tight security then perhaps we would not have had terrorists coming into the country by air, land or sea and plundering our lives and image of the country to the rest of the world. Foreigners fear coming to India because there is no faith in our security system, we ourselves don’t have much faith in it. The recent World Badminton Tournament is an example of it, where some countries pulled out because of security concerns.

Instead of letting our emotions run riot at the first go, let us think it over and decide whether it was truly a biased act. Shah Rukh Khan’s immediate reaction was that of a person used to adulations but later admitted that it was a procedure that needs to be followed. Every non-American has to go through this process in the US. Are we not over-reacting and blowing the issue out of proportion? I feel the immigration officials did nothing wrong and they also gave an explanation for the delay.

Our problem is that we don’t learn from our experiences and expect others to be like us. Had that been the case then by now the terrorists would have owned the whole world. I wish the alacrity with which we reacted to the above incident was also present in our own actions in dealing with terrorist attacks. We all must have noted the innumerable lapses on the part of the police and intelligence services when Mumbai was attacked in November last year, and I had read quite a few articles saying that such things can never happen in countries like the US because of their extremely dedicated and alert intelligence services. Today we denounce them because it involves a much-adored film-star. Are we being realistic?