This week finds me in a nationalist mood. Not khaki
knicker-saffron flag BJP chauvinist but nationalist in the
real sense. The mood is due to a combination of
circumstances, general and personal. Heading the general
category is the disgust I felt as I watched on television
the fawning, almost grovelling, manner in which Bill
Clinton went about his "constructive engagement" with
China: "Beijing University is not the Harvard of the East,
(grovel, grovel) Harvard is the Beijing University of the
West." Clearly in Little Rock, Arkansas, they've never
heard of the universities in Mumbai and Delhi . Even in
their current decrepit condition, they surely match
Beijing.
Then there was the icy horror that crept over me when one
of the defecting Pakistani nuclear scientists calmly
announced that Pakistan had planned a nuclear strike
against India before our tests. So our nuclear tests did
not start the nuclear arms race and may even act as a
deterrent now. Will realisation dawn at last on the world's
sole superpower? Probably not.
The bombs -- as everyone, perhaps even the CIA, knows by
now -- that Pakistan would have used to hit Delhi and
Mumbai could have been Chinese. But there will be no
sanctions against China. That's for sure. There is too much
money involved, too much American money. From all accounts,
this past week's "constructive engagement" was seriously
constructive and resulted in fresh business worth billions
of dollars for American companies.
But there are more personal reasons for the mood I am
wallowing in this week: that Bharat Mata -- and we Indians
in general -- are getting short shrift from the rest of the
world. It is on account of these personal reasons that,
when I landed in India after my three-week sojourn in the
First World, I wanted to copy the Pope and kiss the filthy
tarmac of Mumbai airport.
The personal reasons relate to an incident that occurred at
Paris airport on the final day of my trip. It brought home
to me not just the Kafkaesque nature of French justice but
also the fact that Indians continue to be treated with
contempt in most of the First World. Meanwhile, we treat
our foreign visitors with such abject reverence that many
of them behave as if they were still our colonial masters.
It is time that such attitudes changed. But first let me
tell you what happened to me.
The person I was staying with in Paris wanted me to bring
back a birthday gift for an Indian friend. The gift was a
leather briefcase and since it was being exported from
France she was entitled to some tax relief. "It's the
easiest thing," she said, "you just go to the detaxe
counter at Paris airport, show them your ticket and
passport. Then you put these forms into these envelopes,
post one back to me and one back to the shop."
If only it had been as easy as that. At the detaxe counter
I came across a customs official who refused to believe
that I was, in fact, leaving the country. My ticket was not
confirmed, he said rudely. Then he turned even more rude.
He shoved back my ticket and passport as if he had no more
time to waste.
When he tried to return the tax relief forms which I no
longer needed, I -- having wasted much time -- pushed them
back towards him in much the same manner as he had done. I
also muttered "f... it" to myself. Meaning, as anyone who
speaks English knows, "forget it". But the official's
English was limited and he was offended.
Unfortunately, I was completely unaware that I had caused
any offence -- and so was unprepared for what happened
next. As I walked towards the immigration counter I felt
someone attack me from behind and try to snatch my ticket
and passport. In complete panic, I struggled and screamed
before turning around to realise it was the same customs
officer I had met at the detaxe counter.
To cut a long story short, the officer then charged me with
attacking him and detained me on those grounds. The horror
of what happened is that even the basic rights which are
accorded to criminals in most countries were denied me. I
was not allowed to make a statement, not allowed to make a
telephone call, not allowed to contact my son -- who had
checked into the departure lounge and was waiting for me --
and not allowed, at any stage, to explain my side of the
story. At the end of three hours of detention I was
penalised and allowed to leave.
In the gloomy mood this incident put me in, I have found
myself frequently mulling over whether this would have
happened to me had I been an American journalist or even a
British football hooligan. From this has come the wider
realisation that something has been very wrong with the way
India and Indians have dealt with the world. A cynical
Indian friend says that it could be that we have not killed
enough of our students (Tiananmen Square) or exported
enough terrorism to the United States as Pakistan has done.
Whatever it is, we seem not to have fully understood what
the First World needs for us to be put in the "constructive
engagement" category. The result is we are being
"contained" while the Chinese are being "engaged". As for
Pakistan, all it has received is a mild rap on the knuckles
for nearly starting a nuclear war. Does it make sense?