July 13, 1998

Not the American President, not even French custom officers.

Tavleen Singh

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?

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