so, back in a review i did of a sanjay dutt film, i snidely mentioned that his fight scenes remind me that india doesn’t have an indiginous martial arts tradition. well, it turns out that i’m an ignorant prick.
india has a traditional wrestling style called pehlwani , which was apparently derived from the ancient vedic text martial combat system called "mallayuddha" and possibly persian fighting systems.
pehlwani is practiced in pits of milked sand. yes, sand and milk. now THAT’S macho.
although india seems to have a fairly healthy pehlwani community, albeit tainted by the influences of east asian martial arts and american professional wrestling, pakistan is having trouble keeping the tradition alive according to this BBC article.
and there’s a bunch more indian martial arts that have a wikipedia presence, but possibly not a lot else.
also if you have a lot of time on your hands you should check out the sikhipedia which is superior to the wikipedia because it’s only sikh related articles.