Thanks,Dr Kalam

What happens when very important persons are made to submit to the same drill as the rest of us? Former President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam was stopped at the airport,made to remove his shoes and empty his pockets,while a hand-held metal detector was run over his body — and the earth hasn’t stopped shaking yet. As a former president,Kalam (like other very important people) is entitled to breeze through our airports,his person and belongings unmolested by searching hands. Continental Airlines insists that this is simply a clash of rules,as the US Transport Security Administration demands that all inbound passengers submit to the same procedure. But the point is,either way,so what? After all,this elaborate security theatre has a pretty familiar plot. Most of us have resigned ourselves to being plucked out of a line and made to comply with increasingly random-seeming demands. American and British airlines and airports in particular,with their terror-addled imaginations,fetishise this process as the only thing standing between them and total annihilation. Like it or not,those are the rules for international travel in our post-9/11 world.

But this time,an ordinary civil aviation matter has caused great civic uproar — partly because it targeted a practically beatified former president,and partly because it plays into our persecution complex. Affronted MPs have used it to question our asymmetric relationship with the world,asking why we roll out the red carpet for visiting dignitaries when our own leaders,from George Fernandes to Jaswant Singh and Pranab Mukherjee are subjected to these humiliating screenings? The government is now said to be contemplating a similar set of stringent checks. Meanwhile,the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha,smarting at the injury to the entire country,has burnt effigies of Hillary Clinton for failing to adequately tick off Continental. The Congress called for the airline to be thrown out of India. The Left demanded to know if Kalam’s Muslim identity had to do with the rigorous check.

The VIP class,as a unanimous whole,quivers in outrage. Why do those who make and enforce rules in this country feel their selfhoods at stake when asked to follow the rules? (Somnath Chatterjee even skipped a visit to Sydney after being told he would be checked like everyone else.)

Kalam himself,on the other hand,has never been one to stand on ceremony. He should speak for himself,and show up all those who use him to entrench a culture of inequality and VIP privilege.