My name is Carmichael and I am not a terrorist

By NM Sampathkumar Iyangar

My name is not Khan and I am no Bollywood celebrity. So, the Indian media will not go into overdrive when an American airport staffer lets me in only after a couple of hours of wait. There was a huge uproar about a ‘national insult’ when a superstar of that name was not cleared in a jiffy; the immigration official got suspicious due to his host’s wheeler-dealer background and gave him the discomfort of queuing up to see his boss.

Obviously, there can be no big outcry in my case when minions at the airport of India’s capital city detain me for days for no reason – that too let me out. My detention is supposed to be “on suspicion” but the Indian media is free to front-page it as “Checkmated at Security Counter!”

Winston Carmichael [HT Photo]

Although not highly educated, I was a reasonably prosperous farmer in Jamaica where I could raise my children comfortably. I always taught them that there is but one God and made them stand on their feet. As I moved back to New York in my native country, one of my kids rose to be a decathlon athlete, prominent enough to carry the Beijing Olympic torch, while another went to work at the Wall Street.

My ‘encounter’ with India’s ruling dispensation started after I had completed my corporeal duties in the world. I set out to fulfill the ultimate duty of every able-bodied Muslim who can afford to do so. Yes, I am a Muslim though my name doesn’t include a Khan or Mohammad or Madni. I am called Winston Marshall Carmichael, which does not automatically ring warning bells in people brought up on a staple feed of hate.

I had embraced Islam in my early twenties, which was four decades ago. I never imagined that it would amount to such a grave offence in arguably the “largest secular democracy of the world” when I would visit it. Mercifully, my ‘encounter’ was not as dramatic as the ones that are often faced by local citizens dubbed as aliens.

I could afford a package tour to the Orient for going on Hajj and went to Mecca and Medina in September 2009. I had heard a lot about majestic mosques built by historic figures built in India, the land for which Columbus had set out. It has been a long-cherished wish to go on a pilgrimage to these holy places. It is God’s will that India is what it is today – just a segment of the India that Columbus wanted to reach. The India, currently going by that name, considers the other segments of India as dens of terrorism.

If I am held as a suspected terrorist at Lampur Detention Center run by Foreigners Regional Registration Office, it is again by God’s will. An army of security people mill around me asking all sorts of questions. I am tired of answering the same questions again and again. They made me put my signatures in some documents with lots of fine print in typical poor quality stationary of the Indian government.

After completing Hajj, I came to Delhi from Abu Dhabi. I proceeded by bus to what now is Pakistan along with a group of Indonesians I came to know in Hazrat Nizamuddin area. From there, I flew to Dhaka, the capital city of another segment of the original India going by the name Bangladesh. I came back to Delhi via Kolkata, the one-time capital city of British India. I had the good fortune to stay in several mosques during the trip. It was while boarding the outbound flight by Qatar Airways that my ordeal began.

The X-ray machine showed up some opacity in my baggage. It was a packet of resinous rock called shilajit that I was carrying for my wife. It is peculiar to the subcontinent and is believed to have medicinal properties; it was wrapped around a tin sheet, which apparently looked like a deadly weapon to the security man. No wonder, Delhi’s premier newspaper reported that I was “checkmated” by the sophisticated security machinery of India. However, the metal piece – first hyped out to be a knife – could not be manipulated to fall under the category of any weapon.

Newspapers of India tell me that I am linked to one David Coleman Headley accused of conspiring terror attacks in India. I don’t know any Headley. I have never seen anyone with that name. Again, the Indian media informs the world that the country’s authorities are working hard to find out where all I went in India.

An ‘anonymous’ senior police officer reportedly disclosed to his media ‘connexion’ that they will obviously take time to verify my credentials. Hopefully, the Delhi Police would not be asked to dispatch me to a dozen states for investigation of cases remaining unsolved so far. Hopefully, they would not take their own sweet time – as much as they take for ‘suspects’ arriving from Bangladesh or Nepal who are taken from place to place. The intelligence people will possibly harass all the people whom I met in Delhi and other parts of India – even those who offered a glass of water to me. Maybe some of them will be kept in jail and implicated in incidents they are keen to ‘crack’.

Another newspaper that has “sources” in the government learnt that enough material is available to the establishment to hold me “undesirable” in India – apparently my beard and skull cap! But mercifully, they are not enough to dub me a terror suspect. However, its ‘innovative’ news reporter informed his readers that US agencies have informed India (represented apparently by this journalist) that I have criminal cases related to drugs and robbery registered against me. Authorities have assured Indians at large through this newspaper that once I am deported to the US after verifying all details about me, Indian agencies might issue a look out circular; after the issuance of LOC, I understand that details of my passport will be provided at all entry points and I will not be allowed to enter India again. I can only hope that God does not will that fate to me yet again!

I can’t understand why god has willed 160 million people of India – a number more than the entire population of Japan – to come to such a pass in the hands of their own government. I dread to imagine the disastrous consequence of frustration among the younger generation at the plight their elders face. I hope that god will let good sense to prevail before the trashing subjugation triggers a catastrophe. I hope my country’s Special Representative for Muslims will not wink at the sad plight.

[The author is NOT Winston Marshall Carmichael of New York. Iyangar is an unattached policy analyst based at Ahmedabad, India]