It’s a beautiful story gone horribly wrong. A Muslim urban development minister of a state goes with his young chief minister to the United States to address students at the prestigious Harvard University about successfully conducting a Hindu religious fair and the largest in the word, the Maha Kumbh. The brief beauty of the story ends here and the students never get to hear that lecture. 

On April 24, Uttar Pradesh urban development minister Azam Khan was briefly detained at the Logan International Airport in Boston while he was with chief minister Akhilesh Yadav on a trip to the US during which the duo were to address a gathering in Harvard University on the recently-concluded Maha Kumbh. Khan was the minister in charge of the mela affairs.

Wont to the native VVIP culture of easy passages and first-among-all treatment, the Samajwadi Party leader was stunned when he was detained for about 10 minutes for ‘further questioning’ after he landed in a scheduled British Airways flight from India. That speech at Harvard was ultimately boycotted and the UP CM and Khan returned to India in protest against the “insulting” treatment meted out to the minister.

On his arrival in India, Khan said that security officials acted against him because he was a Muslim. “I being a Muslim was harassed and insulted by that country,” he said.

That’s not all.

Before Khan was “harassed and insulted” at Boston, he had a similar face-off at the Indira Gandhi international airport in New Delhi where he accused the security staff of being “anti-Muslim.”

According to a report in The Indian Express, the incident occurred when the Samajwadi Party’s Rajya Sabha member, Chaudhary Munabbar Saleem, went to meet Khan at the airport, but, was not allowed inside the VVIP lounge. Khan, who was inside the VVIP lounge then came out and reportedly rebuked the security staff, accusing them of having an ‘anti-Muslim’ mindset and not being willing to accept a Muslim MP inside the VVIP lounge.

That’s still not all.

Before boarding his flight to India, Khan said that his questioning by an official of the US mainland security was a conspiracy hatched by external affairs minister Salman Khurshid. He further alleged that the Indian embassy officials at the US airport did not intervene on his behalf when US he was detained, on Khurshid’s orders. He said that the protocol officers deputed by the Indian embassy were mute spectators when he was ‘humiliated’ and they should have contacted the US government brass to prevent his ‘humiliation’.

Khan is known to throw tantrums and had on earlier occasions even fallen out of the SP supremo’s favour due to his uncontrollable habit. His opposition to the SP candidate Jayaprada and the surrounding controversies during the poll campaign for the 15th Lok Sabha led to his expulsion from the party for six years in May 2009. However, his expulsion was revoked and he joined the party back in December 2010.

However, his bevaiour throughout the present episode points to only one end — and that is his sanity. It is time his party stopped playing the Muslim card and worried sincerely about the mental health of a colleague.