I am hard placed to understand the hissy fit Indians are having over the US airport pat down of ambassador Meera Shankar or the one now on another diplomat Hardeep Singh for being asked to show his turban. What part of the American message have we not understood since 9/11? I love the way a billion people go up in arms over abs nothing.
In any case, diplomats are just people who just represent their countries and enjoy living off their taxpayer at the highest end of the food chain with globs of luxury and great freedoms, huge concessions, great manpower, lovely homes and chunks of hubris. They are not, any way you look at it, equated to the country’s honour or standing and, frankly, it is a conceit to make that assumption. All they are is career officers on salary. I don’t feel insulted at all that my ambassador in a country was patted down. They should all be patted down. Diplomats, like me, are also just Indian citizens and should be frisked, scanned, fingerprinted, Iris tested, photographed and quizzed like anyone of us at any airport. What gives them any right to jump the queue? What's the flipping hurry, anyway? Will that all-important meeting reinvent the wheel or make an Indian citizen's life abroad any better? Not a bloody chance. Ironically, and with no reflection on Meera, diplomats have created this little club of exclusivity and are allowed these incredible privileges in breaking any host nation’s laws, including DUI and killing people, misusing the diplomatic pouch for criminal activity, transporting narcotics, and in the final analysis, producing very little result. Their locally bound IAS brethren take collective arrogance to a whole new level and which one of us has not seen a petty pompous bureaucrat escorted by half a dozen minions being taken out in procession from Customs and Immigration with nine suitcases while some poor labourer from the Gulf is getting dicked for a rolled up mattress. There goes democracy at its babu best.
Put this in perspective, people. She just had a pat down. She wasn’t shackled and dispatched to Guantanamo Bay. We all get patted down. In the deep south, in Mississippi where they sold human beings a few years ago, coloured people are suspect, period. It comes with the territory. I don’t condone it, I just don’t think it is worth the indignation. We have enough prejudice at home not to fling outrage at others. And all the folks who work at the Jackson airport, bless them, are not three digit IQ holders with Ivy League degrees, they come from the hicks and the boonies and they don’t know one Asian from another. We are just a brown clump in funny clothes. They will be rough and rude and arbitrary - no different from half the folks behind Indian airport counters who treat you like something under a shoe when you think, aaah, home at last. And that is if you are an Indian.
Come and see how they treat workers returning home. Dude, give me a pat down any time to that grievous insult.
Frankly, all diplomats should stand in line. They are not that important, they are too many of them and they don’t even pay parking tickets. It is only good for general safety to bring them in line with the common man. No one has ever explained why they should be exempt or given this VIP category.
Seeing as how this occurred two weeks ago and Meera Shankar herself did not bother to make an issue of it, why are we being so holier than thou.
There are much bigger things than this trivia to worry about.
Like when did a democracy last have a whole session of the House and conduct no business?
Like what happened to Kasab the killer and how long is this terrorist going to feed off the trough?
And is the Indian army’s senior echelon turning corrupt?
Do our fighter aircraft fly adequately or are our skies vulnerable?
How do we pay the bills and fight inflation as prices soar?
Is China going to give us a hard time?
What are we doing about terrorism?
Stuff like that. Till then, let the pat down continue.
