Who is this Shahrukh Khan character anyway?
Melissa A. Bell -
Sunday, August 16, 2009 2:26 PM
Kidding, kidding, kidding.
Let's just get this out of the way: Yes, an officer likely religiously profiled the guy. Yes, it sucks that we religiously profile and racially profile people in the US. There are small-minded people in positions of authority and that authority can be abused. But that's what this incident says about the US.
What does it say about India?
Yes, it sucks being detained at the airport. I know. I have been. About seven or eight times. Not because I have a Muslim name, but for whatever reason the security guys have come up with that day (flying on a one-way ticket, having a Pakistani visa, a rip in my passport, the list goes on).
It's annoying. It's not fun. It's even kind of scary. But there are a lot worse things than being held up a couple hours at an airport. Like being attacked by violent killers. Or others being attacked by violent killers.
I like what Salman Khan said, "The detention was for security purpose. And it is not a big deal....No 9/11-like incident occurred in US [since] because of strict vigil and I believe it is a good thing." (Disclaimer: This reporter thinks Salman is way cuter than SRK.)
All this brouhaha won't really change the racial profiling in the U.S., especially when it sounds like SRK is throwing a temper tamper. He says: "But I'm a movie star!" the security official says, "Come with me."
You know SRK wanted to hear: "Oh, sir, I am so sorry. I should have known. You are the man who dances even better than the Big B!" And when he didn't, he pitched a fit.
And all these calls of injustice from politicians and stars reaffirms the idolatry of VIP status in India. SRK shouldn't have been detained! He's a great movie star! Just google him and see!
So, what? Only movie stars should be exempt from racial profiling?
This whole incident recalled a moment my friend Anand Giridharadas wrote about in the New York Times when he was in Boston:
"The woman reached for my ticket. I had entered the parking lot two hours and a few minutes earlier. The first two hours were free, but I had stepped just across the line into paying territory. Would she let it slide?
She appeared East African; I am an American who lives in India; I imagined that she and I might have a shared sense of the situation. I was just a few minutes over, and in our Old Countries I might have been waved through with a flexible shrug.
But not here, not in America, where there are rules to bring human caprice under control. She asked for $2, and I paid, with a feeling of sadness at the coldness of our interaction and yet also a sense of admiration for the great human accomplishment -- the invention of patterns that apply to everyone always, not selectively and sometimes -- behind that coldness."
Okay, maybe this was a selective choice of a man with a Muslim name. But that same day, Bob Dylan was detained by police just a few miles away from the airport SRK sat at. Kind of takes the wind out of SRK's sails.
I think if SRK wants to make a mountain of a molehill about problems with the US, he ought to choose something a little less petty to get so indignant about. I can offer him a few options: the lack of access to health care by millions of citizens, the low literacy rate in girls living in the South, the conflicts arising from illegal immigration, the rise of hate crimes, the continued existence of laws such as "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" and the Patriot Act. I can go on...