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Images: second from below - Kirpan crafted by sword-maker, Jot Singh Khalsa. Third from below - photo, courtesy: Sukha Singh.

Sports

Shastar Vidya:
The Art & Science of
Sikh Weaponry

by JEROME TAYLOR

 

In a fluorescent-lit sports gymnasium at a sprawling sixth-form college in Hounslow, west London, England, three turbaned Sikh-Britons are frantically battling each other with razor-sharp swords.

Draped in flowing blue robes and sporting chest-length beards, the three men cavort, twist and counter-attack each other in a blur of clashing blades and skilled confusion.

Watched by scores of eagle-eyed students, the two younger combatants use kirpans - elegant curved swords - and dhaals - small circular shields - to attack a taller and older man who is armed with a long double-edged blade and a simple dagger. Each time his opponents bring their weapons down, the lone warrior nimbly dodges the blow by sidestepping away or deflecting it back onto one of his opponents.

After a brief pause, the tall man walks forward, runs a hand through his thick beard and announces with a slight hint of a Black Country accent: "The next technique I'll teach you is one that can break both a man's arms in just three moves. In real life, of course, once you've broken the first arm your opponent is not getting back up. But when you're practicing, it's best to learn how to break both."

The martial art that the men are practising is Shastar Vidya - a now little-known fighting technique from Punjab that virtually died out when the British Raj banned it after the annexation of the Sikh empire to the British Raj in the mid-19th century.

While Chinese and Japanese fighting forms such as Kung Fu and Ju-jitsu have become national institutions, Shastar Vidya has languished alongside many of the sub-continent's fighting techniques as a forgotten art form.

But one man is determined to bring it back from the brink of extinction. Nidar Singh is a 41-year-old teacher who has spent twenty years studying the secrets of Shastar Vidya in order to pass it on to younger generations. It is a journey that has taken him from being a food packer in a Wolverhampton factory to one of the world's top authorities on ancient Sikh and sub-continental fighting styles.

Now, he is looking for young apprentices willing to devote their life to learning the secrets of, and reviving an art that he believes risks dying out altogether.

"Most people who practise Sikh arts nowadays are simply learning the toned-down exhibition styles that were allowed by the British," he says. "Unless we start teaching the original fighting styles, they will be extinct within fifty years. I want to find two or three sensible, intelligent and tolerant young apprentices who can pass on what I've learned to future generations."

That a British citizen is trying to resurrect Shastar Vidya by teaching it to young Sikhs and other Britons is more than a little ironic, given the history.

Although Shastar Vidya was widely practiced in Punjab long before the emergence of Sikhism in the mid-16th century, it was the Sikh confederacies of the Punjab that came to be the true masters of this particular fighting style.

Surrounded by hostile Hindu and Muslim rulers who were opposed to the emergence of a new religion in their midst, the Sikhs quickly turned themselves into an efficient and fearsome warrior race. The most formidable group among them were the Akalis, a blue-turbaned unit of fighters who became the crack troops of the Sikh Kingdom.

As Britain's modernised colonial armies expanded across the subcontinent, some of the stiffest opposition they faced came from the Sikhs who fought two fierce wars in the 1840s that led to the annexation of the vast Sikh empire and allowed Britain to expand its Raj as far as the Khyber Pass.

Astonished by the ferocity and bravery of the Akalis, the Punjab's new colonial administrators swiftly banned the group and forbade Sikhs from wearing the blue turbans that defined the Akalis.

Sikh warriors were quickly given rifles and drafted into Britain's armies. The practice of Shastar Vidya went underground and was nearly forgotten. In its place, the British allowed and encouraged gatka, a ceremonial and toned-down version of Shastar Vidya which is widely displayed during Sikh festivals today.

Now, Nidar Singh hopes he can make Shastar Vidya as widely practiced as gatka.

In one corner of the gymnasium where Nidar Singh is teaching his class, an array of weaponry has been ceremonially laid out on the floor. Students begin learning how to fight with relatively harmless wooden sticks but those who show a particular finesse and dedication are allowed to practice with the kind of swords that once made the Sikh armies so powerful.

"This is one of my favourite weapons," says Nidar Singh as he picks up an undulating, serrated sword that looks uncannily like a snake. "It's very difficult to learn how to use, but it's also very difficult to fight against. The serrated edge confuses your opponent and allows you to sever muscle tendons in battle. It's a very nasty weapon.

"The key skill Shastar Vidya teaches is deception. It's the blows your enemy never sees coming that do the real damage."

For followers of Shastar Vidya, the martial art is more than just a fighting style. Acolytes are expected to live up to strict spiritual discipline and honour martial codes.

The roots of shastar vidiya are not known, but there is evidence to suggest that Punjab's martial arts predate those from China and Japan.

Monks were the first to export Buddha's new teachings across the Himalayas and according to Chinese legend, it was a monk called Bodhidharma who first introduced martial arts to the famous Shaolin Temple in AD 600.

Bodhidharma himself is thought to have come from south India, where another indigenous fighting style known as Kalaripayattu has also undergone a recent renaissance.

One of Nidar Singh's top students is Iqbal Singh, a 39-year-old businessman from Slough who had spent many years looking for a master who might be able to reconnect him with his culture's martial traditions.

"When I was younger, I used to head down to the British Library where there are loads of manuscripts and books from the Sikh empire," he recalls. "I kept dreaming about travelling back to the Punjab to find a master and I always imagined he'd be some grizzled old man living in a hut somewhere. Instead, the person who seemed to know the most about these fighting styles was a factory worker from Wolverhampton."

In fact, it was thanks to the British Raj's obsessive bureaucracy that people like Nidar Singh have been able to reacquaint themselves with their ancestors' past.

The physical technique of fighting was taught to him in the Punjab by a septuagenarian teacher when he was a teenager, but the vast records in the British Library and the Victoria & Albert Museum enabled him to compile a history of the Akali warriors in a book called In The Master's Presence.

"That's something that has always amused me," laughs Nidar Singh. "It was British colonialism that nearly destroyed Shastar Vidya, but it is also colonialism's obsession with record-keeping that may save it."

 

[Edited version of the original published in The Independent]

May 5, 2009

Conversation about this article

1: Broomstick (Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A.), May 05, 2009, 7:54 PM.

That was a very fascinating read. I've always been disappointed by a great lack of informtion on South Asian martial arts while checking out books on Asian martial arts. Great article.

2: Karamjeet Singh Lamba (Ahmedabad, India), May 06, 2009, 1:49 PM.

I want to learn! It is wierd that most of the good things in Sikhism are happening outside india. You'll have to send some teachers here.

3: Dharamveer Singh (Mumbai, India), July 14, 2009, 3:50 PM.

Karamjeet Singh ji, I cannot agree more. If you want someone like Nidar Singh, please let me be that someone. I promise you that I will never retract from my objective. I always wanted to learn the Gatka but no one was available to teach. Can you please set up something in India, please?

4: Val Asani (Melbourne, Australia), November 01, 2010, 8:31 AM.

Can anyone please let me know if there are Gatka lessons in Melbourne, Australia?

5: Badal Singh (Anandpur Sahib, Punjab), April 05, 2015, 10:23 PM.

Gatka is a beautiful gift given by Guru Gobind Singh Ji.

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