When Shah Rukh Khan walked the blue carpet with daffodil motifs at the Met Gala earlier this month, it wasn’t the first time the Bollywood legend went unrecognized on our shores.
“King Khan,” or SRK as the Indian actor is affectionately known to his fans, didn’t seem to mind. The New Delhi native went with the flow and played against type as a “very shy” and”extremely nervous” wallflower chatting with the charity event’s livestream hosts, Teyana Taylor and Ego Nwodim.
Sabyasachi Mukherjee was less patient. The fashion designer who put Khan’s ensemble together apparently sensed the two women had no idea who Khan was and informed them they were in the presence of “one of the most famous men in the world.”
Clutching a black cane affixed with an 18-karat gold Bengal tiger head and an oversized crystal-encrusted “K” pendant around his neck, Khan, 59, was probably relieved security didn’t call the feds.
Humbling as it may have been to be demoted to the lower rungs of the celebrity hierarchy, a D-list diss beats being mistaken for a terrorist.
“Whenever I start feeling arrogant about myself, I always take a trip to America,” Khan joked at a talk he gave at Yale University in 2012 after he was wrongfully detained by U.S. authorities at the airport in White Plains, New York.
“The immigration guys kick the star out of stardom.”
Khan had already unwittingly taken on the role of “Suspicious Brown man” a few years earlier in 2009 when he was stopped en route to Chicago to celebrate India’s Independence Day. Flagged for his Muslim name at New Jersey’s Newark International Airport, Khan was detained and questioned for two hours before the Indian Embassy intervened.
The international icon, whose net worth is $770 million, was detained once more in 2016 at Los Angeles International Airport, prompting an apology from the U.S. ambassador to India.
“I fully understand & respect security with the way the world is, but to be detained at US immigration every damn time really really sucks,” Khan tweeted back then.
I doubt any of Khan’s interrogators thought to do a Google search. Windblown hair, melodrama and dancing in the Swiss Alps might scare some Americans, but they don’t warrant a Code Red.
While a lukewarm reception at the Met Gala pales in comparison to racial profiling, Taylor and Nwodim’s interaction with Khan reveals they likely didn’t bother to do their homework either.
Khan did. He had never heard of Black dandyism. So he looked up this year’s Met Gala’s theme in the days leading up to the soiree, delighted to learn of the fashion movement’s “resolve to change things without repression or anger” but with an “exuberance of art.”
There’s been a slight pushback to the social media uproar over Khan being snubbed and Mukherjee’s mansplaining to a pair of African American women on a night celebrating Black style and resilience.
But most people weighing in on the subject agreed the strong presence of darker complected glitterati ascending the grand, 63-step staircase was a welcome sight.
I’m surprised the bulk of the online chatter and news accounts of the Khantroversy didn’t touch on Khan’s past airport detentions at a time immigrants and American-born citizens — many Brown and Muslim — are being detained, disappeared or deported without due process.
Khan’s airport ordeals were less about his politics than the grim reality racial and religious minorities face in America in spite of their fame and level of success.
Not that Khan hasn’t had his share of “shut up and dribble” moments in his own country.
Right-wing nationalists likened Khan to the Pakistani mastermind behind the 2008 Mumbai attacks and suggested he pack his bags when he publicly mentioned India’s “extreme intolerance” against Muslims a decade ago.
In 2021, Khan’s adult son was arrested and jailed on drug charges for nearly three weeks — a move many Indians believe was motivated to ensure the influential entertainer stayed mum on national matters.
The alleged strategy worked. The charges were eventually dropped due to a lack of evidence. All Khan has said about the case was that he learned a lesson to “be quiet, be very quiet and work hard with dignity.”
How sad.
Khan may not have been given the royal treatment at the Met Gala. But by showing up in his dark, floor-length coat and bling, it gave him a chance to shine in defiance.
Mukherjee — who is widely known by his first name and namesake label, Sabyasachi — came up with the look “as an expression of freedom and trying to be resolute and resilient against things that can oppress you,” Khan explained.
In other words, it was a wardrobe fit for king.
Rummana Hussain is a columnist and leads the opinion coverage at the Sun-Times.
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