http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/15/AR2009081501595.html
'King of Bollywood' Detained at Newark Airport
By Emily Wax Washington Post Foreign Service Saturday, August 15, 2009; 1:54 PM NEW DELHI, Aug. 15 -- One of India's biggest movie stars was detained and questioned at Newark Liberty International Airport early Saturday, causing outrage across his home country and reigniting discussion of the hardships many Indians say they face while traveling abroad.
Shah Rukh Khan, 43, known here as the King of Bollywood, was on his way to Chicago for a parade later 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 United States 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."
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 apologized to former Indian president Abdul Kalam for frisking him at New Delhi airport.
News of Khan's detention broke on a day of national pride, marked by parades, family picnics and girls wearing bangles in green and orange -- the colors of the Indian flag. News channels aired nonstop coverage of Khan's troubles, along with reaction from Bollywood A-listers, civil rights officials and security experts, some of whom defended the questioning in a post-9/11 world.
U.S. Ambassador to India Timothy J. Roemer released a statement 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 United States. Many Americans love his films," 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.
"There have been too many instances like these in the U.S. concerning Indians," Soni said on television.
Actress Priyanka Chopra, a friend of Khan's, expressed a widely held view in a tweet: "It's such behavior that fuels hatred and racism. SRK's a world figure for God's sake. Get real!!"
But not everyone appeared upset.
Meghnad Desai , an Indian-born economist, a member of Britain's House of Lords and the author of books on Indian cinema and globalization, joked in an interview in New Delhi that the whole thing seemed like a publicity stunt for the new film.
"The U.S. government was an inadvertent accomplice to 20th Century Fox, which is investing millions in this movie," he said, chuckling, referring to a joint venture between Hollywood and Bollywood to distribute the film. "This was a no-no for India-U.S. relations. Anyhow, there will be no bigger story in India tomorrow. Or maybe for the next few days."
On Sat, Aug 15, 2009 at 3:39 PM, Sujeet Bhatt<sujeet.bhatt at gmail.com> wrote:
> http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/news/india/SRK-detained-at-US-airport-for-being-a-Khan/articleshow/4896236.cms
>
> The Times of India
>
-- My humanity is in feeling we are all voices of the same poverty. - Jorge Louis Borges