NEW DELHI — One of India’s biggest movie stars was detained and questioned at Newark Liberty International Airport early on Saturday, causing outrage across his home country and reigniting discussion of the hardships many Indians say they face while travelling abroad.
Shah Rukh Khan (43), known here as the King of Bollywood, was on his way to Chicago for a parade later on Saturday to mark India’s Independence Day when immigration officials at Newark pulled him aside and interrogated him for two hours. The star of scores of top-grossing films was finally released after Indian consular officials vouched for him.
“I was really hassled, perhaps because of my name being Khan,” he said in a text message to reporters in India. “These guys just wouldn’t let me through.”
Khan recently finished a shoot in the US for his upcoming film, My Name Is Khan, which happens to be about a Muslim’s harrowing experience with racial profiling. Khan told reporters that in real life he “felt angry and humiliated.”
Jen Friedberg, a spokeswoman for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which operates the airport, said the agency did not request that Khan be detained.
The incident followed another recent example of an Indian coming under suspicion for what talk show pundits here call “flying while brown”. Last month, Continental Airlines apologised to former Indian president Abdul Kalam for frisking him at the New Delhi airport.
News of Khan’s detention broke on a day of national pride, marked by parades, family picnics. News channels aired non-stop coverage of Khan’s troubles, along with reactions from Bollywood A-listers, civil rights officials and security experts, some of whom defended the questioning in a post-9/11 world.
US ambassador to India Timothy Roemer released a statement on Saturday saying the American government was “trying to ascertain the facts of the case – to understand what took place.
“Shah Rukh Khan, the actor and global icon, is a very welcome guest in the US. Many Americans love his films,” Mr Roemer said.
India’s information and broadcasting minister, Ambika Soni, suggested that Americans should be treated the way Khan was when they arrive in India.
Actress Priyanka Chopra, a friend of Khan, expressed on Twitter a widely held view: “It’s such behaviour that fuels hatred and racism. SRK’s a world figure for Gods sake. GET REAL!!”
But not everyone appeared upset. Meghnad Desai, an Indian-born economist, member of Britain's House of Lords and author of books on Indian cinema and globalisation, joked in an interview in New Delhi that the whole thing seemed like a publicity stunt for Khan's new film.– ( Los Angeles Times-Washington Postservice)