Chinese Bodies in Fire: Interpreting the Refractions of Ethnicity, Gender, Sexuality, and Citizenship in Post-colonial India’s Memories of the Sino-Indian War
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2007
Publication Title
China Report: A Journal of East Asian Studies
Abstract
This article utilises the representation of the Chinese characters in the film Fire (1996) as a strategic site from which to examine the institutional marginalisation of India’s Chinese minority community since the Sino-Indian war of 1962. Through a close examination of diplomatic documents and white papers exchanged between the governments of China and India during the 1960’s, publications of the Indian government on the Sino-Indian war as well as newspaper articles and film reviews on ‘Fire’, this article delineates how the film’s dehistoricised approach in representing Chinese minority voices and their criticisms against Indian society results in obscuring the legacy of the oppression of the Chinese community in India and in reiterating the state’s nationalist construction of the Chinese Indians as treacherous, back-stabbing and irrational ‘others’.
Volume
43
Issue
4
First Page
437
Last Page
563
DOI
10.1177/000944550704300404
Recommended Citation
Banerjee, Payal, "Chinese Bodies in Fire: Interpreting the Refractions of Ethnicity, Gender, Sexuality, and Citizenship in Post-colonial India’s Memories of the Sino-Indian War" (2007). Sociology: Faculty Publications, Smith College, Northampton, MA.
https://scholarworks.smith.edu/soc_facpubs/33