Measure for measure

American civil aviation authorities clearly did not get the memo about Indias extreme sensitivity to routine airport checks for its very important people. The former president of India,A.P.J. Abdul Kalam,was thoroughly searched at New Yorks JFK Airport,and made to remove his shoes and jacket just like everybody else,after he had boarded his Air India flight. Kalam had been subjected to the same drill by Continental Airlines a couple of years back,and then too,Indias MPs and other important people had claimed that it was an affront to the nation. The Congress had then demanded that Continental quit India,while the Left suggested that Kalam had been profiled as a South Asian Muslim. This time,India and the US might even schedule formal talks on how to make international travel friction-free for our dignitaries. Our external affairs ministry has even suggested taking reciprocal measures,that is,punishing the US by subjecting its officials to deliberate searches.

Airport searches are universally annoying but the rest of us who want to travel have resigned ourselves to elaborate and intrusive screenings. The US Transportation Security Administration is especially relentless about this security theatre,now unfeasible to scale down it is now simply a fact of our post-9/11 times. However,in India,our prickly,hyper-sensitive equation with the West,combined with our sense that high office entitles one to float free of the rules,makes these incidents into larger parables about power. (We believe our VIPs need not wait in line or in traffic,need not pay highway tolls,and should generally be allowed to live in a more exalted plane.) Abdul Kalam,in fact,has been the honourable exception in not standing on protocol.

The MEA now threatens to inflate this incident into a standing bilateral issue. Reciprocal checks for US officials,as suggested,would make India appear ridiculous. Our aviation authorities should check whoever they want to check,by their own measures. To use airport frisking as an exercise in revenge and humiliation is a remarkably childish response one that they will hopefully have the good sense to avoid.