‘Chandni Chowk to China’ fumbles in Nepal, protests over Buddha remark

May 16th, 2009 NEW DELHI - Senior Congress leader Kapil Sibal Saturday won the Chandni Chowk constituency in Delhi by over 200,000 votes. The cabinet minister got 465,713 votes, defeating rival Vijender Gupta of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) by 200,710 votes.

February 15th, 2009 KATHMANDU - After fighting over the Buddha, the apostle of peace and non-violence, Nepal's former guerrilla party, the Maoists, are now blowing cold towards the world icon, flaying his inclusion at a communist meet. The Communist Party of Nepal-Unified Marxist Leninist (UML) has come under Maoist fire over its critical convention that kicks off at Butwal town outside Kathmandu valley Monday to choose a new leader.

February 6th, 2009 KATHMANDU - Nepal, a major market for Hindi films, has now come up with tougher regulations for foreign films, close on the heels of banning Bollywood comedy 'Chandni Chowk to China' for wrongly saying India was the birthplace of the Buddha. 'We had been proposing in the past that foreign films that are shown in Nepal undergo the same international criteria elsewhere in the world,' said K.P.

February 2nd, 2009 KATHMANDU - Almost a fortnight after Nepal's government banned Bollywood film 'Chandni Chowk to China' following violence over a statement in the kungfu comedy that the Buddha was born in India, students have kept up protests in the capital. This time, however, their anger is directed towards the oldest university in the Himalayan republic, the Tribhuvan University, where a prescribed text book by an American scholar also contains the wrong information.

January 26th, 2009 KATHMANDU - The anti-Indian sentiments triggered by banned Bollywood film 'Chandni Chowk to China' has stoked fresh demands for the recovery of the land acceded to India by Nepal nearly two centuries ago. On Monday, as India celebrated its 60th Republic Day, students staged a noisy protest in front of the Indian Embassy in Kathmandu, asking for the restoration of 'Greater Nepal'.

January 24th, 2009 MUMBAI - TV celebrity Shekhar Suman, who panned Akshay Kumar and his latest release 'Chandni Chowk To China' as the 'worst film made in the history of Indian cinema', has apologised to the star. 'It was never my intention to offend Akshay.

January 24th, 2009 KATHMANDU - Even as public anger continued to simmer in Nepal over the gaffe in Bollywood film 'Chandni Chowk to China' that the Buddha was born in India, the oldest university in the Himalayan republic joined the controversy with a media report Sunday that it has been teaching from a book that has been making the same mistake for 10 years. 'A History of Knowledge: Past, Present and Future' by American author Charles Van Doren is one of the prescribed text books at the English department of Nepal's Tribhuvan University intended for postgraduate students, the Naya Patrika daily said.

January 23rd, 2009 KATHMANDU - Even as public outrage erupted in Nepal over Bollywood film 'Chandni Chowk to China', which wrongly described India as the Buddha's birthplace and was subsequently banned in the country, an American author has managed to get away with making the same mistake in her best-selling novel. Celebrated American author Amy Tan's 'Saving Fish From Drowning', a quirky tale about the misadventures of a group of American tourists who blunder through China and Myanmar, also wrongly describes the Buddha, who was born in Lumbini in southern Nepal, as an Indian.

January 22nd, 2009 KATHMANDU - After banning 'Chandni Chowk to China' in all 75 districts of Nepal for wrongly claiming the Buddha to have been born in India, the Himalayan republic is now bracing for a fresh diplomatic offensive against Bollywood's first Kungfu comedy that has become controversial overnight. Nepal's council of ministers headed by Maoist Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal 'Prachanda' Friday decided that besides banning the film in the country, the foreign ministry would take up the issue with India's external affairs ministry.

January 21st, 2009 KATHMANDU - As protests continued to erupt on the streets of Kathmandu Thursday over Bollywood's first Kungfu comedy 'Chandni Chowk to China', cinemas in Nepal stopped screening the controversial film, saying they had replaced it with other films. All Kathmandu valley cinemas, from multiplexes like Jai Nepal, Kumari, Gopi Krishna and Barahi, to smaller ones like Guna and Ashta Narayan, hurriedly dropped the Akshay Kumar-Deepika Padukone starrer and began showing the earlier Bollywood release 'Ghajini' or waited for another Bollywood film 'Raaz' to be released Friday.

January 21st, 2009 KATHMANDU - Bollywood's much-awaited first Kungfu comedy Chandni Chowk to China has created a rift on YouTube with Indian, Chinese and Nepali members trading insults. The film, co-produced by Warner Brothers Pictures and directed by Nikhil Advani triggered protests with its statement that the Buddha, the founder of Buddhism, was born in India.

January 21st, 2009 KATHMANDU - Six years after Nepal banned a section of Hindi films due to erupting violence, the new Maoist-led government Thursday officially banned Bollywood's first Kung Fu comedy 'Chandni Chowk to China' after continued public protests over its misrepresentation of the Buddha's birthplace. The formal ban by the ministry of information and communications came as cinemas in Nepal had on their own stopped screening the controversial film Wednesday.

January 17th, 2009 NEW DELHI - After working with Bollywood disco king Mithun Chakraborty in 'Chandni Chowk To China', superstar Akshay Kumar says the former is a 'classic actor'. 'This is the first time I have worked with Mithun Da.

January 16th, 2009 WASHINGTON - American mainstream media has given a lukewarm reception to 'Chandni Chowk to China', the largest-ever release of a Bollywood movie in North America, calling it 'a genetic experiment' and a 'genre-mashup overkill'. 'A veggie-slicing galoot from Delhi goes to China to realise his destiny as a martial arts master - and just from the synopsis, I'm on board with 'Chandni Chowk to China',' says Time magazine reviewer Richard Corliss.

January 10th, 2009 NEW DELHI - Bollywood megastar Amitabh Bachchan will attend the London premiere of Akshay Kumar's comic caper 'Chandni Chowk To China' (CC2C) Monday. Amitabh, who is in London for make-up tests for his forthcoming venture 'Pa', received an invitation from Akshay for the premiere over a phone call from Toronto, Canada.