Martial arts of India

Story hook

In a small kalari (training pit) in Kerala's Thiruvananthapuram, a man in a red loincloth performs a sequence so fluid it looks like a dance. He springs into a low crouch, sweeps his sword in a circle overhead, jumps from one foot to the other, and at the climax literally jumps over his opponent who has lunged with a spear at chest height. The whole sequence took 7 seconds.

This is Kalaripayattu, often called the mother of all martial arts. Some traditions claim it is over 3,000 years old, the oldest extant fighting system. It is mentioned in the Tirumantiram of Tirumular and in the Dhanurveda — the ancient Indian treatise on warfare. Buddhist legend says that the monk Bodhidharma, who travelled from Tamil Nadu to China in the 5th-6th century, taught Shaolin monks Indian fighting techniques that became the seed of Shaolin Kung Fu. Whether or not that lineage is historically true, what is true is that India's martial heritage predates almost every continuous fighting tradition in the world.

Yet for a country that birthed warriors, kings, and an immense literature of warfare, the martial arts of India are barely known to most Indians themselves. Kalaripayattu, Silambam, Gatka, Thang-Ta, Mardani Khel — each is a regional cosmos with its own weapons, training methods, philosophy, and surviving lineage of masters. The 2014 Khelo India recognition of Kalaripayattu as a sport, the inclusion of Gatka at the 2022 National Games, the revival of Mardani Khel by Maharashtrian women's groups — all point to a slow rediscovery.

Why this matters for UPSC

Indian martial arts appear in UPSC Prelims roughly every 3-4 years, often as state-art matching questions or "which is the oldest" questions. Mains touches on them in GS-1 Art & Culture (traditional knowledge systems) and rarely in GS-2 (cultural diplomacy). Interview boards probe them as cultural identity questions and "what's your favourite traditional sport".