Jackie Chan’s new film Kung Fu Yoga – a high-profile product of the co-production agreement between China and India, signed in 2014 – has come under a barrage of criticism in India for perpetuating outdated and offensive stereotypes.
The film, which features Chan as a professor of archaeology who teams up with an Indian counterpart to search for lost treasure in Tibet, appears to have gone down well enough in China, but Indian critics have been noticeably hostile. The Wire described it as a “series of misfires, wearing inauthenticity on its sleeves like a badge of honour”, while the Daily O said it “affirms China’s stereotypes about India”. Mid-Day objected to it as “desi exotica – starring snake charmers, and the great Indian rope trick”.
The film, which reunites celebrated Chinese actor Chan with his Rumble in the Bronx director Stanley Tong, was planned in part to “marry … the film traditions of China and India”. However, its cross-cultural ambitions were dented when the Indian element of Kung Fu Yoga’s backers, Viacom18, pulled out in 2015 amid rumours “it wasn’t getting enough say in how [the film] was being made”.
A number of Indian critics have also pointed out a bizarre interpolation of what sounds like Chinese government propaganda into the film’s dialogue, when Chan’s character is asked by an official to “help the Belt and Road initiative”, a wide-ranging pan-Asian economic plan inspired by the Silk Road, which aims to consolidate China’s regional dominance.
