Sunday , April 22, 2007
Gun Less Days While America debates on its gun control policy, gun sellers in Kolkata muses over the days when possessing a rifle was fashionable in a section of Bengali society
Shamik Bag
Vestiges of the Raj lie ignored and faded inside the glass panelled shop window. Hints of rust taint the wings of the fairy, a miniature near reproduction of the one that stands atop the Victoria Memorial; the authoritative leap of the two golden-coloured steeds seems to have been stopped mid-air, the metal’s shine too forced from many polishes. Everything, including the smattering of guns, holsters and firearm paraphernalia that are on display at the shop window, seem untouched by time, their time long gone.
Once inside, Samarendra Krishna Daw says something to that effect too, unwittingly introducing a whiff of wistfullness to the conversation even before we begin. 76-years-old, Daw is among the oldest members of the gun retailing business in Kolkata, a reasonable breadth of time, Daw says, for him to have witnessed first-hand some of the boom, literally, of the firearms business in Kolkata. Those were the days of the British in India, and just past it, when a rifle at home meant stature in society, when the Babus of Kolkata fired in the air in anger and celebration, and when the flourishing zamindari system supported a passion for firearms and shikar. “Where are the people to buy rifles today?” Daw asks, allowing a self-pitying smile to escape before he speaks again. “Our shop remains bedecked for them, but those people are no longer around.”
Indeed, everything at N.C. Daw & Co. at Dalhousie Square force one back to those times. Established in 1835, adoring the walls of the store are dozens of stuffed bison and deer heads, manual typewriters rot on wooden tables, the old dialing phones are yet to make room for push-button varieties, and Daw still uses the dowat-kalom, the old-fashioned pens where nibs had to be dipped in ink before writing. “Those days are over sir. If it weren’t so, I would have been talking to you while sitting on the Floatel. You know nah...the hotel that floats on the river?” an official, almost reading my mind, mutters into the phone. The elderly Daw, meanwhile, washes his hands in the river’s water, “purifying” himself before he locks the store’s money chest for the day
Hundreds of rifles guard over the scene. In overhanging cabinets, they are like weary soldiers rarely called to action. Till 1962-63, N.C. Daw used to sell as many as 20 rifles in a day to private parties. These days, Daw points out with that self-effacing laughter, they are lucky to sell six rifles in a month to individuals. No wonder then, Daw rarely dwells on the present, preferring so much to hark back to the past when the store supplied arms to the kings of Bhutan, Nepal and Sikkim, the first President of Bangladesh and the Maharani of Burdwan. “The Tagore family, the Mallicks, the Debs of Shovabazar, the Sens, the Maharajas of Chilkigarh, Cooch Behar and Burdwan — a class of people patronised firearms. Not just rifles, but bullets, holders, cleaning goods, there was no end to the passion of the rajas,” recounts Daw.
In between a flourishing business in guns in Kolkata, where though around a dozen stores still conduct business many others like the Army Navy Stores, Manton & Co., R.B. Rodda & Co. and Lyon & Lyon have downed shutters, stands strict government legislation.
Starting with Lord Lytton’s enactment of the Indian Arms Act of 1878, which is understood as a reactionary act following 1857’s Sepoy Mutiny, the Arms Rule of 1962 in independent India, which gave sweeping powers to licensing authorities, to the mid-1980s, when the government banned all arms import, legislation in India has slowly tightened the screws around the gun trading business. Add to that, the Wildlife Protection Act, 1972, which banned the custom of hunting in India, the erosion of the bonedi Babu culture and the abolishing of the zamindari system, and what you have is what Daw refers to as “a dead business”. “Now the licensing authorities are so strict that even though there are people to foster the passion they don’t get a license. Heaps of applications are lying with licensing authorities like the police and district magistrates, but very few are actually granted,” informs Swapan Biswas, of JC Biswas & Co. As an institution, JC Biswas and Co. is over a hundred years and four generations old, but “the new generation is shying away from the business,” Biswas says.
At Lenin Sarani’s A.T. Daw & Co, ‘gun sellers and makers’ established around 1840, double and single bore rifles line the cabinets, most there for “repairs and safe keep,” according to owner, A. K. Daw. In between identifying tags of owners like the Pals, Chowdhurys and Raychowdhuris, is one that reads as ‘Branch Manager, UBI, Jodhpur Park Branch’. Banks, commercial institutions, security agencies and occasionally, rich farmers of the districts looking for self-protection, have emerged as the new patrons of a culture that was once the reserve of the classes. Says Samarendra Krishna Daw: “It is ironical because Kolkata was the first city to have a Rifle Club and there was no report of irresponsible use of firearms by licensed owners. Yet, since everything moves in a circle, we hope someday good days will come back to our business and the government will allow wider ownership of guns. Till that happens, I have no option but to cling on to the past.”
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The above article perfectly pictured the present situation of Kolkata Gun Shop owners and for the person who wish to legally posses arms. Thanks to Shamik for writing this Nice piece.
Thanks & Regards
Saptarshi
