There’s something ridiculous on many levels about suspecting a Sikh of being a terrorist because he’s wearing a turban, to say nothing of the issue of profiling a man in the dumbly mistaken belief that he’s a Muslim.
Few of the ironies would have escaped the Indian-born fashion designer and actor Waris Ahluwalia when he was bumped from a flight from Mexico to New York on Monday for refusing to remove his dastaar.
After September 11, the heartland of the United States’ special brand of insular ignorance was exposed by a wave of attacks on pretty much anyone who even vaguely fitted the ill-defined profile of a terrorist.
Such was the concern, the US Department of Justice launched the “Initiative to Combat Post-September 11 Discriminatory Backlash”, to “combat violations of civil rights laws against Arab, Muslim, Sikh and South Asian Americans” who had “been the victims of increased number of bias-related assaults, threats, vandalism and arson”.
It singled out Sikhs, issuing posters pointing out that Sikhism is “a religion that originated in South Asia during the 15th century, and is distinct from Islam”.
Clearly, Mexican security officials never got the memo.
Ahluwalia, 41, who lives in New York, is an inscrutable support actor who has appeared in such eclectic Wes Anderson comedies as The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, The Darjeeling Limited and The Grand Budapest Hotel. That suggests he shares the director's keen eye for the absurd.
But he failed to see the funny side on Monday when airline officials at Mexico City International Airport demanded he remove his turban as he waited to board a flight to his home city for New York Fashion Week.
He refused, on the grounds that Sikh men aren’t allowed to do so in public. “That’s akin to asking someone to take off their clothes,” he told the media.
This was life imitating art. In a scene in Spike Lee's 2006 film Inside Man, Ahluwalia plays a disgruntled Sikh deprived of his turban by heavy-handed cops.
“It’s part of my religion, to cover my head in respect to God,” he explains, before complaining: “I can’t go through security without a ‘random selection’.”
Bumped from Monday’s flight, Ahluwalia posted a selfie on Instagram, showing his boarding pass with the telltale designation “SSSS”. Secondary Security Screening Selection means a passenger has been singled out for special measures, including swabbing for explosives residue.
Ahluwalia refused to leave the airport without an apology from AeroMexico, and finally received one, after a day-long stand-off.
The case, said the airline, “motivates us to ensure that security personnel strengthen its care protocols, always respecting the cultural and religious values of customers”.
Ahluwalia was born in 1974 in Amritsar in India’s Punjab, home of the Golden Temple and the spiritual centre of the Sikh religion. His father was a linguistics professor, and his mother a teacher.
His father, he told an interviewer in 2007, “had a burning desire to see America”, and at the age of 5, Ahluwalia and his parents moved to New York. There were plenty of Sikhs living in the city. But while most of them were to be found in Queens, Ahluwalia’s family settled in Brooklyn.
That, and being the only Sikh in his class from elementary to high school, made for “some interesting times”, he told SikhChic.com in an interview in 2006. As a potent symbol of his “otherness”, the dastaar tested him at the arts college he attended in upstate New York, where he was again in a minority of one. In his first year, he later admitted, he wore only a patka – the small “under turban” usually worn by young Sikh boys – “out of perceived pressure that I felt people put on me based on my looks”.
After two years, he moved to Manchester, England, where he spent a year at university, and felt more at home. England, he said, “was great from an identity perspective ... there were so many Sikhs. I started wearing my dastaar at all times.”
After college, it was back to New York, where the world of work beckoned – and from the outset, Ahluwalia baulked at the idea of working for someone else.
After two dispiriting job interviews, he set out on his own account, first trying his hand at publishing a music magazine. When that failed, he had a stab at an internet start-up. Next, he and a friend set up a non-profit organisation to raise awareness of HIV/Aids in South Asia.
But when his big break came, it was quite by chance.
In 2003, he had a jeweller friend in New York make him some distinctive knuckle-duster rings he had designed for himself, comprising heavy silver, “with an elaborate assortment of diamonds”.
That winter, following the sun and some friends to Southern California, he wandered into Maxfield, an upmarket boutique on Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles. A buyer spotted his rings, and there and then placed a large order.
Not bad for someone with no training in jewellery design. The rest, as they say, is history.
The rings quickly sold out, and the fashion press came calling, forcing Ahluwalia to quickly invent a name for a company he had had no intention of forming. The House of Waris remains the name of his high-end jewellery business.
As he told The New York Times in 2011: "I fell into jewellery by accident; the universe opened a door, and I walked through it".
The universe has opened quite a few doors for Ahluwalia. His account of what happened next is probably best avoided by struggling actors who can’t catch a break.
“One day I was having dinner with Hollywood director Wes Anderson, who was a friend,” Ahluwalia told SikhChic. Anderson asked him what he was doing for the second half of the year. “He sent me the script for his new movie and told me he had a part for me … he did not even call me for an audition.”
Without a single acting lesson to his credit, Ahluwalia found himself in Italy, shooting for the 2004 film The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou. His next dinner partners were the movie's stars Bill Murray and Willem Dafoe.
It was Dafoe who passed his telephone number to Lee, who was casting his latest film, Inside Man, starring Denzel Washington.
Since then, Ahluwalia has had roles in half a dozen films, several directed by Anderson, a handful of TV series and even a commercial for Gap, a clothing chain that had once turned him down for a sales job. His most recent film is last year's Beeba Boys, a Canadian thriller about Sikh gangsters in Vancouver.
Ahluwalia’s day job remains jewellery, and he feeds a wealthy clientele a constant diet of extravagant pieces, handcrafted in Rome and Rajasthan, and heavily reliant on gold, diamonds and price tags designed to appeal to those seeking exclusivity.
Not all of his pieces are bank-breakers. A limited-edition Boo necklace – a small gold pendant formed of the word “Boo” – is a relative snip at a mere US$350 (Dh1,286). But if you’re looking for a heavyweight Valentine’s Day statement this year, his Palm brooch, an ostentatious explosion of 18-carat gold and far too many white diamonds to count, will set you back $51,340.
Ahluwalia has crafted his own image as carefully as any piece of jewellery. In almost every photograph, he adopts precisely the same camera-confronting pose and near-expressionless gaze.
Always perfectly groomed and dressed, in 2011, GQ magazine hailed him as one of its Best Dressed International Men and "the perfect example of New York hip".
A darling of the fashion press, his every word is consumed enthusiastically, and he rarely passes up an opportunity to offer an utterance interpreted eagerly by fashionistas as deep and meaningful.
"People often describe my work as East meets West, but I feel it is more past meets future," he once told The New York Times. "Yes, I am inspired by India in the sense that it is a land of ancient kingdoms, but what mostly inspires me is love and history – neither of which I understand."
There aren’t too many globally known Sikh celebrities, which means that he has become an inspirational hero for many young Indians, “a good example for young Sikhs of today who forget their identity”, according to one fan among many posting over the past few days.
If Ahluwalia were a character in an Anderson movie – which, in a very surreal sense, he is – he would be a self-conscious symbol of postmodern irony, a quintessential modern man famous for his fame.
As it is, he has found a new, unexpectedly real-world role for himself.
Still in Mexico on Tuesday – hunkered down in a strange stand-off with the airline, thanking them for the apology but now offering to run a crash-course in Sikh-awareness for their staff – he told CNN: "I'm not here to just talk about myself, or Sikhs; the conversation has to be larger than that, it has to be about all ethnicities."
Actor, model, designer, muse, style icon – and now unlikely hero in the war against racial stereotyping.
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