Barrier test

After the advent of the new age of terror,security was supposed to be the great leveller. High or low,mighty or weak,you were supposed to undergo the same set of security checks at airports. Matters of aviation security could not afford even the tiniest crack for risk. The US Transportation Security Administration’s guidelines were recently ramped up and the option to frisk diplomats too was left to security officers’ discretion — they would no longer be automatically exempted,to go by the book at least. That’s what happened to India’s ambassador to the US,Meera Shankar. The Indian foreign ministry’s continued claims to taking offence and reciprocating reveal a shockingly brittle sense of national honour. More so,its warning that such incidents “naturally” call for a review of privileges extended to US diplomats in India.

It appears that for the Indian establishment nothing can be the great leveller. It so staunchly swears by the feudal ideal of hierarchy that the foreign minister has linked such incidents at US airports to the cordiality of bilateral relations. Do we laugh or express exasperation? Are foreign relations built on the trivial and personal? Well,the tit-for-tat the ministry of external affairs has been harping on would be not only unbecoming of a democratic government but also juvenile. And diplomacy,certainly,must not entertain such silliness.

There’s been enough consternation about former Indian presidents,ministers and filmstars being frisked elsewhere. If others choose not to recognise the cordon of privilege we erect around our VIPs,they are only erasing the great divide we have driven between the elect and ordinary,most visible at our airports. What the government should seriously consider is reviewing and streamlining all privileges rather than its school-yardish threat of a pat-for-pat. The government has got the Meera Shankar provocation all wrong. It’s not about national honour. It is a reminder of the neo-colonial stratification we impose at our own security barriers.