INDIA ARMED VIOLENCE ASSESSMENT Issue Brief Number 4 January 2014 Small Arms of the Indian State A Century of Procurement and Production Introduction state of dysfunction’ and singled out nuclear weapons (Bedi, 1999; Gupta, Army production as particularly weak 1990). Overlooked in this way, the Small arms procurement by the Indian (Cohen and Dasgupta, 2010, p. 143). Indian small arms industry developed government has long reflected the coun- Under this larger procurement its own momentum, largely discon- try’s larger national military procure- system, dominated by a culture of nected from broader international ment system, which stressed indigenous conservatism and a preference for trends in armament design and policy. arms production and procurement domestic manufacturers, any effort to It became one of the world’s largest above all. This deeply ingrained pri- modernize the small arms of India’s small arms industries, often over- ority created a national armaments military and police was held back, looked because it focuses mostly on policy widely criticized for passivity, even when indigenous products were supplying domestic military and law lack of strategic direction, and deliv- technically disappointing. While the enforcement services, rather than civil- ering equipment to the armed forces topic of small arms development ian or export markets. which was neither wanted nor suited never was prominent in Indian secu- As shown in this Issue Brief, these to their needs. By the 1990s, critics had rity affairs, it all but disappeared trends have changed since the 1990s, begun to write of an endemic ‘failure from public discussion in the 1980s but their legacy will continue to affect of defense production’ (Smith, 1994, and 1990s. Instead, reviews of the Indian official small arms procurement p. 222). Later analysis found India’s modernization of Indian security for decades to come. Key findings of ‘defense acquisition system . in a emphasized major conventional and this Issue Brief include: Mumbai police constables with Lee-Enfield rifles, the iconic Indian Army and police firearm through most of the 20th century, still in widespread use with Indian security services, Mumbai, December 2008. © Sajjad Hussain/AFP www.india-ava.org 1 Decentralization of small arms ment agencies. The research, based on Loading Rifle (SLR) followed by the procurement since the 1990s has hard data and estimates, forms a tenta- Indian Small Arms System (INSAS) devolved purchasing authority tive picture of the main types and total rifle, the Sterling sub-machine from the central government to scale of the arsenal of small arms of the gun, and the 9 mm Auto pistol. security agencies, states, and cities. Indian state. This Issue Brief focuses on Insistence on domestic production This facilitated unprecedented firearms, for which data is more read- yielded slightly, enabling imports diversification of official small ily available, not less documented light of specialty weapons. arms and suppliers. weapons, such as heavy machine guns, 2008 to the present, Indian security As Indian state governments and mortars, and rockets. agencies switched from domestic government agencies diversify This Issue Brief shows that after the procurement to rapid moderniza- their small arms procurement, Mumbai terror attack of November tion through imports. Homogeneity their arsenals have become more 2008 India’s conservatism in small arms gave way to heterogeneity as gov- modern, but less homogeneous. procurement yielded. As after the 1962 ernment agencies and state govern- A definitive history of Indian small Sino-Indian war, the 2008 attacks trig- ments procure weapons to serve arms manufacturing has yet to gered a race to modernize Indian secu- their distinctive requirements. The be published. Consequently, total rity agencies and their armaments. IOF lost their monopoly on govern- production and official inventory Official small arms policy has begun ment sales and consequently now figures can only be estimated. to resemble other elements of Indian compete with foreign suppliers Total official Indian inventories are federalism, with power concentrated for contracts. estimated to contain 5.6 million small not in the central government, but in Through these three waves, Indian arms. Approximately 2.6 million of semi-autonomous agencies, states, and security services gradually accumulated these belong to the military, 1.3 mil- municipalities. In place of national large arsenals. The following section lion to paramilitary agencies, and small arms procurement, Indian states reviews the acquisitions and estimated 1.7 million to police. and agencies pursue distinct and indi- quantities of the most numerous types This research uncovered no reports vidual armaments policies, sometimes of Indian government firearms. or records of surplus small arms buying ageing domestic equipment, destruction by the Indian armed sometimes importing the most advanced services. designs available anywhere. This has Iconic and archaic, the bolt-action resulted in a blended arsenal of state- First wave: Lee-Enfield rifle will remain the of-the-art and older models. the Lee-Enfield rifle most numerous official Indian Archaic and iconic, the bolt-action Lee- firearm for many years to come. Enfield rifle defined the first modern 1 9 Roughly . million remain in Three waves of Indian small wave of official Indian small arms pro- service. arms procurement curement. The rifle was produced in Since the 2008 Mumbai terror several versions by IOF Ishapore from attacks, Indian security agencies Government small arms procurement 1907 to 1974.1 Despite efforts to replace are relying less on domestic pro- for security agencies—the military, it, as of end-2013 the Lee-Enfield rifle duction of arms and more on paramilitary, and police—falls into remains more widely deployed among modernization through imports. three waves, distinguished by procure- Indian security services than any other Planned modernization creates a ment strategies and types of weapons: weapon (see Table 1). potential requirement for almost 1900 to 1963, weapons based on Despite the ubiquity of the Indian 6 million new firearms for Indian older British designs were manu- Lee-Enfield, its production history is military, paramilitary, and police. factured by the Indian Ordnance not well understood. In the early 1900s, With a monopoly in domestic arms Factories (IOF). The era was dis- India imported Lee-Enfield rifles at a production, the Indian small arms tinguished by great homogeneity rate of roughly 50,000 annually (Walter, industry is economically secure. in small arms types: all agencies 2005, p. 87). Given the scale of its needs, But with official customers increas- used similar equipment, all pro- the British colonial government was ingly free to buy arms from foreign duced by the same supplier. The persuaded to support local production, suppliers, the national industry dominant small arms were the a major concession by a regime previ- seems destined to become a sup- Lee-Enfield rifle and the Webley ously opposed to domestic Indian plier of last resort. revolver. industry. Plans for domestic produc- This Issue Brief examines the small 1964 to 2007, following the Sino- tion began in 1901 (OFB, 1999). Early arms of the Indian state from two related Indian war, India began acquiring licensed manufacturing was troubled, perspectives. First, it examines the main greater numbers of semi-automatic however, and series production only types of firearms in service, noting and automatic firearms, still rely- began in 1907, standardizing the short- three historical waves of procurement ing mostly on local production of magazine Lee-Enfield (SMLE) Mk III, from production and imports. Second, foreign models, with some efforts at which remained in production for over it examines the total size of the fire- indigenous design. The dominant 60 years (Skennerton, 1993, pp. 331, 335; arms inventories belonging to govern- weapons of this era were the Self- MGA, n.d.). 2 Small Arms Survey Issue Brief Number 4 January 2014 Table 1. Documented examples of rifle production rates at Ishapore, 1939–2011 Designation Type Total built Years Average annual rate Source .303 Lee-Enfield Bolt-action 692,567 1939–45 115,000 Skennerton, 1993, p. 341 2A1 Lee-Enfield Bolt-action 250,000 1963–74 22,000 Skennerton, 1993, p. 345 SLR 7.65 Semi-automatic 350,000 1965–71 32,000 Eger, 2006 SLR 7.65 Semi-automatic 300,000 1965–66 300,000 Graham, 1984, pp. 167–68 INSAS 5.56 Automatic 269,612 1998–2000 90,000 CAG, 2001, para. 47.7.1.1 INSAS 5.56 Automatic 100,000 2011 100,000 MoD, 2012 In 1926 the colonial government 250,000 Ishapore 2A1s were made exports, Indian security services appear had 650,000 Lee-Enfield rifles. The before production ceased in the mid- to be equipped with roughly 1.9 million following year production expanded 1970s (1993, p. 345). Other sources Lee-Enfield rifles as of2012 (see Table 8). to roughly 60,000 annually, accruing a maintain that approximately 500,000 total inventory of some 830,000 rifles were delivered to Indian security agen- by 1931 (Skennerton, 1993, pp. 339–40). cies (MGA, n.d.). Symbolizing the con- Second wave: Production slowed thereafter; only servatism of Indian arms procurement, 17,620 were built or overhauled in ‘the Ishapore 2A1 has the distinction small arms 1939–40. But wartime pressures led of being the last non-sniper military In the second wave of Indian small to further rapid expansion. In all, bolt action rifle ever designed and arms procurement, efforts were made 692,567 rifles were manufactured by issued to an armed force’ (MGA, n.d.). to match international trends, but with the IOF during the Second World War Post-independence production of a strong preference for domestic design (Skennerton, 1993, p. 341). While the the Lee-Enfield Mk III rifle and its and production, even when results number is impressive, it should be derivative models fluctuated between were disappointing. Greater diversity measured against the growth of the 22,000 and 115,000 annually, averaging of types and suppliers emerged as new Indian Army.