Talk:Gatka

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Needing work

I added the POV and wikify templates to this article. There is almost no historical information in the "history" section (which is the only section, as there's no overview) and what is there is is POV and unsourced (e.g. "Opposing forces are documented to have cursed the awesome Warrior Saints that the Sikhs were!"). siafu 19:01, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Sadly, I don't have the knowledge to make these changes, but here are a few things which would improve this article without even getting into the (excellent, but long) guidelines on the Martial Arts Project page:

• Fix the POV on the history. I am going to fix a few things, but I'm not deeply familiar with either the specific history of the style or with the very early history of the Eastern martial arts, so I can't do very much with it.
• Add more information about the style. What are key principles? What forms are used? You link to the main article on swords, but presumably Gatka uses only some of those weapons. Which ones? Which aspects of other styles are derived from or influenced by Gatka, and what techniques has it taken from other styles?
• Give some information on the philosophy of the style, both as it relates to Sikhism and as it relates to non-Sikh practitioners.

Zabieru 00:31, 1 May 2005 (UTC)

I took a swing at some basic re-ordering and recategorization to clean up the article, as well as working on some of the grammar. Ronabop 08:25, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

DO NOT remove the NPOV tag without first dicussing it here

Thetruth, please DO NOT remove the NPOV tag without first discussing it in the talk page. --Vivin Paliath (വിവിന് പാലിയത്)

When I added to NPOV tag way back when the article didn't look the way it does now. The biggest problem it seems to currently have is a lack of sources/references and a very odd tone. Normally I wouldn't say that this would be appropriate to add an NPOV tag to this article, but it doesn't seem like all the issues have been addressed yet, so keeping it until then seems appropriate. siafu 02:03, 19 July 2005 (UTC)

References

This article has a lot of POVs and a lot of work needs to be done. It lacks proper references and considering my family has a long history in terms of Sikh Phulkian states, this article is seriously in need of work since it is voicing a lot of assumptions.

Especially with its reference to Rajputs and origins of Gatka, also take a look at the time frames and hsitorical correlations.

The article was a nice idea but needs a lot of work.

Good luck

Gorkhali 10:23, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

Informational quality?

I am not Sikh, but one sentence brought to my attention the fact that perhaps the entire article needs to be thoroughly checked for factuality. The sentence was:

It [Gatka] was perfected by the time of the tenth and last Sikh Guru.

I am pretty sure there were twelve Gurus? Either way, I agree the article is in need of serious work, and references need to be found.

Thanks, Dan Let me make it clear that there were ten Gurus only. The Guru Granth Sahib was established by Guru Gobind Singh as a divine book which have soul of all ten Gurus. Daljeet —Preceding unsigned comment added by 124.253.133.157 (talk) 13:44, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

I've not personally read the article so you could well be right, but no, there were ten Gurus only, plus the perpetual Guru Granth Sahib. Sukh | ਸੁਖ | Talk 18:03, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

Image copyright problem with Image:Banda Singh Bahadur.jpg

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Let me make it clear that there were ten Gurus only. The Guru Granth Sahib was established by Guru Gobind Singh as a divine book which have soul of all ten Gurus. Daljeet —Preceding unsigned comment added by 124.253.133.157 (talk) 13:41, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

• That there is a non-free use rationale on the image's description page for the use in this article.
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references needed

apparently, gatka simply means "short stick". I find 1980s sources that discuss gatka as just one item alongside other Indian weaponry. I have also seen the claim floating around that it was the British who extended the meaning of gatka to include all "Sikh martial arts", but I am not sure this is correct. The impression I get from googling is that there is a recent (2000s) surge in interest in Sikh martial arts, and gatka as a term for a wider martial art, as opposed to fighting with the short stick, appears to arise in this context. We need better sources. --dab (𒁳) 14:34, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Guru Nanak

I removed the creator of Gatka posted as Nanak Dev. Guru Nanak was the first Guru and Founder of the Sikh Religion and not the martial art gatka. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.164.7.166 (talk) 06:14, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

ok, it turns out that gatka is a style of stick fighting based on sword training as it was practiced in the 1880s, i.e. after the ban of traditional martial arts under the British. --dab (𒁳) 15:22, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

terminology

I have looked into this some more, and I think I understand the terminological confusion now.

• 1860s to 1947: Gatka is the name for "stick fencing" as practiced by Sikhs in the British Indian Army in the late 19th century
• 1947 to 2000: fencing isn't part of any army's curriculum any longer. Gatka becomes a performance art, essentially people jumping about twirling assorted weaponry
• 2001: Niddar Singh comes up with his Shastar Vidya historical martial arts reconstruction of pre-1857 Sikh martial arts. Unlike the performative gatka, this is an actual combat-oriented martial art, albeit with a historical/antiquarian scope
• 2000s: Niddar Singh gets publicity, and lots of Sikhs begin calling their performative gatka Shastar Vidya too. So now Shastar Vidya may either refer to performative gatka (jumping about with assorted weaponry) or to Niddar Singh's historical martial arts school

I am not sure if this means we should split this article, separating "performative gatka" from "historical Sikh martial arts". --dab (𒁳) 07:48, 10 September 2009 (UTC) Naadar is a fake —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.73.165.97 (talk) 02:34, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

Gatka also practiced by muslims tribe 'Tanoli' in Pakistan

I was searching for Gatka over the net and came across this article; as this is a tradition of my tribe the 'Tanoli' in Pakistan and its been in our tribe for a long time. Initially it was a sort of stick fencing but later it remained as performance art (as aslo mentioned in above post); now its almost finished. Cheers! Wikitanoli (talk) 15:12, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

shastar vidiya is different from gatka

Londondajatt (talk) 18:01, 10 July 2010 (UTC) It should not redirect to gatka as gatka and shastar vidiya are different arts, where more people practise gatka.

Article in the BBC

Hello everybody, I just read a BBC article, "The only living master of a dying martial art," stated that Gatka and shastar vidya where too different things as opposed to what is stated in the revival section I was wondering if anybody could look into that. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-15480741 is the link to the article Philoleb (talk) 00:47, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

You mean "two" different things. The article you link is about Nidar Singh. He reconstructs historical Sikh martial arts. It is true that this is different from "gatka" as in stick katas or sword dance. The problem is WP:NOTE, so far it has not been arguable to write a standalone about Nidar Singh and his school because there were not sufficient third party sources. If BBC and others keep writing about him, we may soon be in a position to compile an article about this. As a temporary solution, I have just stashed away brief mention of this under "gatka" for lack of a better solution.

I actually like what I see of this man's work online, he seems to know what he is doing. But obviously there are also a lot of vanity and political issues involved. Instead of just saying "I am a decent martial artist intersted in reconstructing Mughal era Sikh fighting styles" he styles himself the "last master of a dying art", poses for the BBC as some sort of walking armoury and claims to teach "shastar vidya", i.e. "Indian martial art" on behalf of the entire subcontinent. This is slightly stretching credibility, and for the purposes of Wikipedia, there simply needs to be enough tertiary references before covering a commercial martial arts school run by a single individual. --dab (𒁳) 19:54, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

Actually, now the BBC World Service seems to have broadcast a program dedicated to this, "Last Sikh Warrior" on Heart And Soul, 31 October 2011, it should be possible to argue WP:NOTE is met. I'll try to branch this into a separate Nidar Singh article over the next few days. Note that the term "shastar vidya" will need disambiguation, because Singh is using it idiosyncratically. It is basically just the Sanskrit term for "martial arts". Only Singh seems to be using it in a sense of "Sikh martial arts of the 17th to 18th century". --dab (𒁳) 20:02, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

Reconstruction

There's a misconception among editors on this article that gatka refers specifically to the stick-fighting sport, while everything else is a reconstruction of historical Sikh martial arts called "shastar vidiya". The term shastar vidiya is simply armed combat or martial arts in general. It is not and was not a particular system of fighting, but was a collective word for fighting arts at the time. It wasn't even confined to Sikhs or Punjabis, but also adjacent areas of India and Pakistan. The Gurjaras are but one example. Furthermore, gatka is absolutely not a reconstruction. I don't want to generalise since I know that there are some attempts to revive certain Sikh/Punjabi fighting styles. But by and large, gatka masters and instructors simply teach what they learned from their own teachers. For instance, gatka was first brought to Malaysia and Thailand during the colonial era when Sikhs first immigrated to this part of the world. Though it was never widespread, it has been practiced since that time for demonstrative purposes, and the Malaysian Gatka Federation has never made any attempt to "recontruct" anything in the way that is being done with medieval European styles. Strictly speaking, it is true that gatka should properly refer to the stick-fighting sport which originated as a form of sword-training, much in the way that Japanese swordsmen would train with wooden swords. However, the other weapons which are now included under the term gatka have always been a part of the system. Morinae (talk) 05:46, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

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WP:TNT

Back in 2012, the article was much shorter and much more modest, but it was actually backed up by references[1] Since then, people just seem to have piled on unreferenced blog-entry material. If nobody is up for cleaning it up and basing it on references, I would propose that reverting to what was actually referenced is the obvious way to go here. --dab (𒁳) 14:08, 1 January 2018 (UTC)

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