China in Bollywood

Abstract

This article engages sociologically with three different academic discourses. The first pertains to the field of international relations, referring specifically to an enduring aspect of India-China bilateral relations over the last half-century or more that is known in shorthand as the ‘trust deficit’. The second has reference to the field of cinema studies, in particular to the generic characteristics of the Hollywood/Bollywood ‘war film’. The third reflects on issues of territoriality in the modern world of nation-states: on national borders and the ‘borderlanders’ of the contact zones, and on sacred and secular carto-graphies. In attempting to understand the nature and mode of production and reproduction of the Indian public’s mistrust of China, the article takes up Chetan Anand’s iconic ‘war film’, Haqeeqat, released in 1964 very shortly after the disastrous 1962 India-China border war which formed its subject matter. Unlike many films of the last two decades on India-Pakistan and Hindu-Muslim relations, briefly referred to by way of comparison and con-trast, Haqeeqat’s stereotypes of Indians, Chinese, and borderlanders have yet to be over-written or complicated by countervailing images. They remain effectively frozen in time, leaving the dominant public perception of China as it was in the early 1960s––an image of both menace and duplicity.