There has been an avoidable brouhaha over two Indian diplomats being subjected to frisking at airports in the United States. Umbrage has been taken to the fact that they aroused suspicion on account of their attire — one diplomat was in a sari and the other wore a turban. This is not new. Ask anyone with a Muslim name, or who is brown skinned, or bearded and not too old, what they have had to go through while travelling in the US since 9/11. All this is probably because of the racial and religious profiling ingrained in the minds of those concerned — the staff of the US Transport Security Administration. Indian security personnel are not free of such prejudices. Quite understandably, the agencies concerned are not apologetic, since they cite the rulebook. Ordinary Indians may wonder why so much fuss is being made over diplomats getting a taste of what they have been routinely subjected to, at home and abroad. Even if the noise being made has the desired result — diplomats are not hereafter subjected to such treatment — the average Indian air traveller will remain where she has been.
While diplomats can be forgiven for having a heightened sense of amour-propre, the media, which prides itself on its no-nonsense attitude, should have done better. It has led the charge in claiming that India and Indians have been affronted when the main preoccupation should have been soul-searching over not just scams and a non-functioning Parliament but media celebrities being exposed for influence-peddling to boot. A new low has been touched in a headline in a leading daily claiming that the civil aviation minister said we should frisk those who frisk us. Now he didn’t quite say that. His point was, India should offer reciprocal treatment in matters like diplomatic privileges and VIP treatment. This is clearly a case of interpretative headline-writing having gone too far.
But the minister’s actual comment should also not go unchallenged. It is absolute rubbish to bring the issue of reciprocity into the matter of security. Countries’ security perceptions differ and they respond accordingly. For decades, the security drill adopted by the Israeli national carrier El Al was the most rigorous in the world but no one objected because no country faced the kind of terrorist threat that Israel did from supporters of the Palestinian cause. The US’ security perception underwent a sea change after 9/11. It is for India to work out its own security requirements and stick to them without caring about niceties. In responding to such incidents one must distinguish between the requirements of security and those of protocol. It is not clear why the Indian foreign minister had to go on record, offering an interview to a TV channel, protesting against US security procedures, when it seemed as if his objections were only about protocol. Indian politicians and senior civil servants and diplomats have been pampered for far too long by a feudal protocol system at airports and public places. If their ego gets punctured once in a while, it is not an affront to India.
