Shastar
Gatka is a martial arts, where you go from bare handed combat to using various other shastars such as a kirpans ,sticks ,lathis ,marotis ,nun chucks, axes and a lot more.
The first shastar anyone student will use is a stick normally made out of bamboo. With the stick you are taught all of the basic movments, so you can imply them with other shastar as you gain more experience.
Kirpans come in different shapes and sizes and can also come in differnet styles.These are some the kirpans we practice with. Such as the thega or a normal kirpan for advanced students they may even use open headed kirpans. Some students do not chose to use kirpans and chose to pick a khanda , a double edged sword normally double handed. When you go onto to sparing with shastar you are then introduced to shields, they vary alot some have spikes on them, some are very basic and are only used for defence.
The akhara doesn't just use khanda and kirpans, but some students use nun-chucks , this weapon is used by many and was made famous by Bruce Lee a famous Chinese martial artist.
Sparing is a different thing all together and is very dangerous, sparing with kirpans and axes . Some shastar that we did use but wore either in our kamar kasa or around our dastars, such as a chakar .
Some insturments used in war were not even weapons such as the ranjeet nagara, the drum of victory, was used to boast the morale of the Sikhs going to battle, during battle and coming out of battle. Even bani was used to help in battle the bani helped even the weakest Sikhs to fight heroiclly, such as Shastar Mahma or sometimes known as Shastar Nam Mahla from the Dasam Granth.