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Lathi

Focus	stick-fighting
Hardness	semi-contact
Country of origin	India Pakistan Bangladesh
Parenthood	historic
Olympic sport	no

Lathi (Hindi: लाठी, Bengali: লাঠি) means stick and also refers to an martial art based on cane-fighting. The word is used in Hindi, Bengali and various other languages. The lathi typically measures 6 to 8-foot (2.4 m) and may be tipped with metal. It commonly used as a crowd control device by the Indian Police and other South Asian law enforcement agencies. A lathi-wielder is known as a lathial or lethel or lathait.

History[link]

Following their conquest of India the Mughals introduced zamindar, which refers to intermediary landed elements with various levels of inheritable land rights. Lathial groups were sent to forcefully collect taxes from villagers. The zamindari system continued during British rule and wasn't abolished until after India's independence in 1947. Rich farmers and other eminent people in today's Indian villages still hire lathial for security and as a symbol of their power. Disputes in villages, when settled illegally, still involve lathi battles but this is no longer a common practice and it has largely been replaced by legal methods or, rarely, shootouts. Although lathi remains a popular sport in Indian and Bangladeshi villages, urbanisation has led to a decline of this rural martial art.

Training[link]

Lathi wielders must be able to fight using sticks of different lengths and thicknesses. Matches are generally one-on-one but the art also includes routines for fighting multiple opponents. Most Indian styles of stick fighting, such as silambam, use the base chakra as their energy centre. The low centre of gravity results in the techniques being performed mostly with the knees bent. In lathi however, the centre of energy is the heart chakra, so practitioners fight in a more upright position. This is believed to align the body with the earth's gravity field, encouraging energy flow to the heart and healing the body of chronic ailments or structural problems.

In law enforcement[link]

The British colonists introduced the lathi as a weapon for the Indian Police. This gave birth to the lathi-charge, a military-style rush that uses lathi to disperse crowds. Lathi are now often used to control riots and also as a secondary weapon. In modern times, the lathi is the primary weapon of the Indian riot police along with helmets, shields, tear gas and other methods. Policemen are trained in highly co-ordinated drill movements which can leave many of the rioters crippled. This drill has been quite controversial among human rights activists so in many places the police do not follow the drill but hit in such a way to disperse the crowds. Security guards and police officers often carry a lathi along with or in place of firearms. They prefer lathi for their ease of use and comparative safety and only resort to firearms in situations when lathi cannot be used efficiently.

See also[link]

• Silambam
• Law enforcement in India

References[link]

• Donn F. Draeger and Robert W. Smith (1965). Comprehensive Asian Fighting Arts. Kodansha International. 

External links[link]

• Lathi

This article is on Indian Trade Unionist Baba Ram Chandra. For the Ghadarite leader and editor of Hindustan Ghadar, see Ram Chandra Bharadwaj.

Baba Ram Chandra (born 1864) was an Indian trade unionist who organised the farmers of Oudh, India into forming a united front to fight against the abuses of landlords in the 1920s and 1930s. He was also an influential figure in the history of Fiji, and owed his inspiration to take up the cause of the down-trodden to his 12 years as an indentured labourer in Fiji and to his efforts to end the indenture system. His real name was Shridhar Balwant Jodhpurkar. He was a Brahmin, of Maharashtrian origin. He left for Fiji as an indentured labourer in 1904 after changing his name to Ram Chandra Rao in order to conceal his identity as a Brahmin, since Brahmins were not preferred as indentured labourers.

His stay in Fiji[link]

He stayed in Fiji for thirteen years and took active part in the movement to emancipate the lot of the indentured labourers. He came in contact with Manilal Doctor, who took keen interest in social and political movements in Fiji. Ram Chandra used religion to organise the people. He was responsible for the staging of Ram Lila in Fiji which helped in creating a sense of solidarity among the Indian indentured labourers. He also ensured the dismissal of an official who rode roughshod over the religious sentiments of the labourers. He led popular demonstrations in Fiji to focus on the grievances of indentured labourers. He smuggled into India an article on the deplorable and inhuman conditions of indentured labourers, which was published in Bharat Mitra, a newspaper from Calcutta. The Fiji Government was alarmed by this article and was on the look out for its writer. The article created such a furore that Ram Chandra was advised by his friends to leave Fiji before the authorities were able to lay their hands on him. He left Fiji in 1916.

Organising farmers in India[link]

On his return to India he settled in Ayodhya and became a sadhu (holy man). He was accused by the local police of spreading disaffection among the peasantry. He married a woman of middle caste and commenced calling himself "Baba Ram Chandra." He moved around the region with a copy of the Ramayana under his arm, blending readings from this popular Hindu epic with denunciations of both the British Raj and the landlords, and appealed to the peasants to act together against their exploiters. Although he began by seeking to harmonise tenant-landlord relations, Ram Chandra soon considered this to be a wasted effort and began to mobilise the peasants. He encouraged peasants to pay only the required rent and refrain from customary donations. In 1919 he led the first peasant protest against the landlords and by 1920 had organised all the farmers associations in Oudh, forming the Oudh Kisan Sabha (Oudh Farmers’ Association). He was arrested on a number of occasions for organising public protests.

He tried to get the support of Nehru and other Indian National Congress leaders to fight for the rights of the farmers but was disappointed to discover that the Congress, with its urban-based leadership, was concerned only with independence and did not seem to understand the needs of the peasants.

External links[link]

• The Origins of the Peasant Agitation in Oudh
• Baba and Non-Cooperator Congress

References[link]

• M.H. Siddiqi, Agrarian Unrest in North India 1918-1922, Vikas Publishing House, New Delhi, 1978
• K. Kumar, Peasants in Revolt: Tenants, Landlords, Congress and the Raj in Oudh, 1886-1922, Manohar Publications, Delhi, 1984.