Business stopped in gun capital of India

Indian arms vendor Gulzar poses with a double-barrelled shotgun in his shop in Kanpur, about 80km outside of Lucknow, on April 6. PHOTO: AFP

Customers come from far and wide to buy rifles and shotguns from the dozens of tiny shops clustered in a bazaar in the ramshackle town of Kanpur, the gun capital of India's Uttar Pradesh state.

But business has stopped. Arms sales have been banned as the country's largest state -- infamous for lawlessness -- holds month-long polls under heavy security, halting one of the area's most profitable sectors.

"This has been traditionally a very large market for the guns and perhaps it's one of the biggest markets in northern india," said senior city police officer Alok Singh.

"It not only caters to Kanpur but there's an adjoining area where there is a tradition of bearing arms. So they come to Kanpur to purchase their arms."

Singh referring to Bundelkhand, an undulating arid area that spans southern Uttar Pradesh and neighboring Madhya Pradesh state and is known for a macho culture and the prevalence of bandits.

"In these parts, it is very much a culture to have a weapon slung across your shoulder," said Javeed Ahmed, a senior police officer for Kanpur and surrounding areas.

"It is as much a requirement for security as a cultural thing."

There are approximately 130 gun shops in this city, according to the local arms licensing office, most of them along the old Meston Road in the heart of Kanpur, a former mill town sometimes called India's Manchester.

With little industrialization in these areas, guns are also one of the few status symbols available to locals, he added.

"There's no industrialization, nothing to divert attention," said Ahmed.

At one point some districts in the state even used the popularity of guns as a tool in population control, offering gun licenses to those who brought in people to be sterilized.

Many Kanpur's shops have old fashioned names -- like "Imperial Arms" and "Lords Gun House" -- with attractively painted signs portraying rifles and, on occasion, fearsome-looking men wearing sunglasses.

At the moment, however, with a seven-stage election underway, no guns may be sold. Shopkeepers are passing the time cleaning the weapons, painting the shops and talking politics.

On Friday, 16 million voters were eligible to vote for 58 members in the 403-seat state assembly under the watch of almost 70,000 paramilitary troops in the second stage of voting.

In the run-up to the elections, residents have been asked to deposit their weapons with local gun shops.

"We have about 200 guns in our deposit," said clean-cut Afzal Alam, 30, whose grandfather started the Mehboob Alam & Sons arms store some 50 years ago.

The store sells Indian-made as well as vintage rifles from World War II and a Colt rifle manufactured in Connecticut in 1888, which would sell for about 100,000 rupees (US$2,270).

Crime gone up and more and more people come to buy guns for self-protection, added Alam.

"People buy guns a lot for weddings also," said Gulzar, 26, who uses only one name and runs Universal Guns, also owned by the Alam family.

Gulzar that many people use rifles to shoot bullets in the air to express their joy as they sing and dance in the procession that accompanies a groom to his wedding.

Gun have been good in recent years, said gun store proprietor Zia-ul Islam Chowdhary, general secretary of the Kanpur arms dealers association.

"Business is comfortable," said Chowdhary, "This government is issuing more gun licenses."

There are approximately 800,000 arms license holders in Uttar Pradesh, according to the state's home ministry, more than 20,000 of them in Kanpur.

The current government, which is run by Mulayam Singh Yadav and the Samajwadi Party, has been blamed by opponents for being soft on crime.

The state's growing reputation for lawlessness has been a campaigning point for the opposition in the polls, in which Yadav is fighting for re-election.

But police officer Ahmed said that in many cases, guns were vital for the safety of villagers in rural areas where bandits roam and where there may be only one policeman for 2,000 residents.

"Someone living in a far-flung hamlet has some justification to have a weapon if he can have afford one," said the police officer.

Some shop owners like Chowdhary are sure business will pick up once votes are counted on May 11.

"The customer who is not able to come now will come later," Chowdhary said.

"If he has to buy a gun, he's going to buy a gun," he said.