Shah Rukh Khan has insulted himself by taking popular and controversial line of ‘Religious discrimination’. Shah Rukh Khan’s statement after getting freed was not well thought out. Instead of oft repeated and severely abused statement of ‘harassment’ by immigration officers, he should have calmly answered the questions and gotten away from this incident. It could very well be possible that he might have deliberately not answered the immigration officers question in order to get detained which would work wonders for his upcoming film ‘My Name is Khan’. Again the above statement is my wild guess and is not based on any material or immaterial facts.
Its only in India, we have so many VIPs. We have a VIP in everybody. One who does a Software Job is a VIP in his neighborhood, one who is a government officer is a VIP, one who is a MLA is a VIP, one who is a MP is a VIP and one who is a Bollywood actor no matter what his box office hit rate was is considered a VIP. All these people demand VIP status wherever they are. This is a virus like symptom only in India and has no cure for it. Shah Rukh Khan has created an embarrassment for Indian and American officials by exaggerating his 2 hour ordeal which is otherwise a routine questioning.
Ambica Soni want a tit for tat treatment. Rather than streamlining our rules and regulations at our airports, she stupidly calls for a Tit for Tat treatment. What a pity.
Let us not make a mountain out of mole. Shah Rukh Khan’s bad experience is not uncommon and i don’t understand why he should be treated any different than others. He didn’t get this bad treatment in India , but in a foreign land. He can’t expect royal treatment everywhere and he is not right in complaining about the immigration process.
I should thank the immigration official who gave us Indians an opportunity to think/re-think on the VIP treatment.
If i was Mr Khan, i would have said that Indian airports too should have similar and strict rules and regulations to prevent future terrorism incidents. We should stop delaying flight departures because a VIP is stuck in a traffic jam and is late at the airport. We should stop VIPs abusing airport staff for not giving them royal treatment.
Wish you a happy Independence Day.
Filed under: VIP
[...] was overblown, and indicted what has been termed India’s “V.I.P. culture.” For example, Sridhar Kondoji at the blog eNewss writes: All these people demand VIP status wherever they are. This is a virus like symptom only in [...]
[...] was overblown, and indicted what has been termed India’s “V.I.P. culture.” For example, Sridhar Kondoji at the blog eNewss writes: All these people demand VIP status wherever they are. This is a virus like symptom only in [...]
I do not know who Sridhar is. I got the link to this blog thru NY times.
In this blog Sridhar says “Shah Rukh Khan has insulted himself by taking popular and controversial line of ‘Religious discrimination’” while i have not read anything anywhere in which Sharukh said that he was detained because his religion. He said it could because of his name. what he said is correct. A well trvelled person like Shahrukh would know very well on the immigration and customs procedure (of different countries).
Sridhar how may countries have u travelled so far? and how many times thru the US customs?
A well travelled person would know how they are treated at the customs. It is easy to do the kind of guess work Sridhar has posted in his blog that they demand VIP treatment – which is not true.
While the US home land security system is used to protect the citizen and the country it is not completely unflawed system. Scanning using the names based on certain religion tends more towards racial profiling Deatining/questioning has also happened to lot many bollywood actors like Aamir Khan, Kamal Hassan and more recently Nitin Mukesh (questioned because he does not look like an Indian !!). The sytem should also have the complete data on the person (at least witha person like Shahrukh Khan the person who often visits US and his movies/shows generates so much of business for the country)
Sridhar – Please try to look out of the colored glass before posting such blog, without experiencing the reality. The frustration in a “Well” does not apply to the “Ocean” in many cases.
Mike Patel
Hi mike,
I am staying in United States for the past 11 years. I was on F-1 status, H1-B status as well as EAD. I am not even green card holder. I have friends from Bangladesh, Nepal, Sudan and many more from India. I have friends who last names are khans too. I have personally seen such detentions too and i never felt that they are anywhere close to calling racial profiling or religious discrimination. I have flied several times between India and US and also visited other countries. Like everybody, i had to remove my shoes, belt and remove the gold ornaments whatever i had. I have seen my Bangladeshi friend display all her gold ornaments in the airport. If you say that this is abuse and SRK shouldn’t go through this because he is Khan, then i don’t agree with you. Also the name check is done on last name some times they do extra round of questioning randomly. One of my Muslim friend couldn’t take it anymore and he left for Canada.
SRK could decide not to visit USA again and this will be his personal decision. But iam 100% sure he won’t make this stupid call because he will loose big bucks if he stops visiting United States. Most of the big banners in India are gearing up to tie with Hollywood producers and SRK will miss the bus, if he decides to stay away from US. SRK sue does want to come to US and make money but doesn’t want to play by their rules which is odd. He does fire up his fans to protest for his treatment, but will also not seek an apology from US (as if someone is going to offer him an apology).
I would suggest we all should work towards preventing terrorism rather than be angry at measures taken to prevent terrorism.
Even former vice president went a thorough screening in one of the airports in united states.
I am software engineer too and i can understand how difficult it will be at least for immigration department to create/maintain a separate list of VIPs to do a second name check run at busy airports to know the person’s identity.
They simply don’t have the capacity nor the patience to take a chance and that is why they are so far successful in preventing another terrorist incident.
My frustration about SRK is that he wanted a special treatment for himself rather than make a strong case for us all.
I hope you understand it.
Thanks for reading my blog.
Sridhar,
I am also a US citizen and have lived lot more years in the US and have experienced the pre and post 9/11 conditions in the country. I have travelled several times in and out of US and there were situation where i was asked to step aside to answer more questions.
You did not interpret my reply porpely. There is a difference between you, me and SRK. We may have travelled countable number of times across the customs compared to SRK. He as a star and must of have made 100′s of trips in and out of the country. The sytem should hve all the records of who he is and the trip details to track his background. There are few people commenting without understanding the reality. They have their mindsets stuck to the times of “VIP” treatment demanded by few high profile people and try to apply this to everyone who complains about the system. How do you know that SRK demamded VIP treatment? Anyone who has travelled extensively would be flexible to go thru the frisking and the regular checks. If they are pulled aside for unnecessary reasons , anyone who is clean for that matter will get annoyed- whether it is me,you or SRK.
I was pulled aside 20 years ago as I did not have the new visa stamped on my passport. The INS then had the rules that they would not stamp the new visa on the passposrt unless the current one is expiring in another 60 days. The INS officer who pulled me out was questioning on why I did not get the new visa stamped and he did not know the rules that washington did not issue the visa if it was not expiring in 60 days. He was not ready to listen to me. I kept my mouth shut as I did not wanted to feel that he did not know the rules.Such cases are annoying. If these officers do not do their home work properly it is a problem to everyone.
I am poinitng toward the flawed system. With so much information at finger tips now a days some of the personal still want to show their power. If so much money has been poured into the homeland security system, the personals should try to make best use of it rather than coming into conclusions and creating unnecessary hassels. I am referrring to 2 hr queationing period 30-40 mins is reasonable and acceptable time to everyone. Do you know whether Al Gore waited for 2 hrs at the customs? Definitly not.
This also similar to the Henry Louis case where the police arrested him at his home.
Hi mike patel,
I have interpreted your response properly. Your statement that “There is a difference between you, me and SRK” is flawed. Also, you ask the immigration officials to maintain all details about stars like SRK. This is not feasible in my opinion.
There are many stars in the world (from countries such as India, US, England, China, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Russia etc), if you count sports stars too, then almost every country has stars. Do you think, it is feasible to profile all stars and maintain a database of such stars? Also, US should be tracking these stars at all times to see if there is a change in their profile to re-asses their high profile status. right?
THis is a never ending process in my honest opinion. There is absolutely no difference between you, me and SRK. Terrorists can employee any one of us for creating havoc and that is the reason why US is very particular about going through additional checks if it deems fit.
It doesn’t matter if the ordeal is 30 minutes or 3 hours or 1 hour. All it matters is how confident the official is. US immigration official knows Al Gore by name and face, but he doesn’t have any info on SRK. Can you fault the US officials here? This can very explain the time difference of ordeal between Al Gore and SRK.
I hope you are getting my point. There are many politicians from India who went through similar ordeal and i am sure, even SRK might have gone through it before, but coincidentally he complains about it through media only this time.
Thanks
sri
Sridhar,
What I meant my “There is a difference between you, me and SRK” is in context with the other lines I have in my comment. Unfortunately you tend to pick up only the words that are favorble to you posting. I never said that they have to maintain a seperate account for SRK. If the system was unflawed they would have the complete histrory of travel of each person visiting US and they can clearly distiguish between the person who is frequest visitor and others and the sytem also has additional information and whreabouts. Probably you are not aware that they have all this information available in the system as of present day. If they have spent so much of tax payers money on developing this system, they should also looking to analyzing the information obtained from the system rather than coming up with indvidual opinions. It would be just a waste of everyones’ time as well as tax payers money.
It is unfortunate to tune in with the media and post a blog that he demanded VIP treatment.
Mike
Hi Mike patel,
No no. Iam not cherry picking lines from your comment to suit my post. I am trying to understand your point of view. I think my previous comment best answers your latest comment as well.
You cannot judge a person based on his past behavior or based on historical data.
I may travel to united states almost every month and let us assume for argument sake that US immigration officials maintain and preserve all my data and is readily available at the click of a mouse. If US started pre-judging me based on my past trips and loosen up their security clearance, i may easily be bought over by Al-Qaeda to carry out attacks on my future trips. I am not saying SRK will be one such profile, but technically it will be difficult for US immigration officials to weed out good apples from bad apples.
Unless immigration officials maintain google like data centres and processing power of amazon web services, it will be near impossible to get real time data. Again this will be as good as their latest data which may be flawed. So, let everybody go through security checks no matter who the person is.
Given our argument background and SRK’s hurt ego and his hue and cry, don’t you think he wanted a special treatment? “Don’t scrutinize me, iam SRK” type attitude. Look at Faraha’s and priyanka’s reactions.
SRK should have given a detailed account of what those questions were and why he ended up being scrutinized. One account says that he may have used South Asia identity rather than Indian identity.
–sri
The US authorities were perfectly justified and the Indian agencies & the government will hopefully learn from it.
It is ridiculous that this actor declared that he was a “star”!
He imagined that his ’star’ status and the ‘Muslim’ status carries some kind of immunity. For the record, in India, these two categories do carry considerable immunity (check the link at the bottom).
Indian movie stars/producers are known to be in close contact with many underworld/terrorist figures like Abu Salem and Dawood Ibrahim and others who have now found safe haven in Pakistan.
Some time back, another Bollywood star, the famous actor, Sanjay Dutt was arrested and the court had sentenced him to jail with regard to his terrorist related activities. It was established clearly that he had links with Abu Salem and Dawood Ibrahim and he got guns and ammunition from them.
He was found in possession of weapons in his house just prior to the terrorist bombings in Mumbai (this attack was different and was way before the Pakistani commando attack on the 5 star hotels etc). The actor Sunil Dutt’s mother, Nargis was a Muslim.
There is lot of info. on the web: Terrorism in India – Paying the Price for Long Time Complacency http://www.sonyvellayani.com/2008/09/terrorism-in-india-paying-price-for.html
— This exact response was censored by NYT-The Lede/Sarah Wheaton and still shows-up as “Your comment is awaiting moderation” even after about 13 hours.
Hi dilpd,
Your comment may be waiting approval for reasons other than you imagine. May be Sarah has too many comments to go through and she just decided to approval few that relate to her story line.
Film stars are forced to maintain contact with underworld because our government can’t provide security to these stars. So, these stars succumb to their blackmail and pay their haftha and also maintain contacts. This is wrong and illegal but that is the fact.
–sri
[...] review) as of August 15, 2009 2009 August 15 tags: discrimination, religious by dlawnews.com If My Name was Khan, i would have reacted differently – enewss.wordpress.com 08/15/2009 Shah Rukh Khan has insulted himself by taking popular and [...]
[...] Kondoji wrote on the blog eNews: All these people demand VIP status wherever they are. This is a virus like symptom only in India [...]
[...] Again the above statement is my wild guess and is not based on any material or immaterial facts. more [...]
[...] was overblown, and indicted what has been termed India’s “V.I.P. culture.” For example, Sridhar Kondoji at the blog eNewss writes: All these people demand VIP status wherever they are. This is a virus like symptom only in [...]