GATKA AS A SPORT
Gatka sport is being played with wooden sticks and requires two or more practitioners. In Gatka, the Stick and Farri are also used to substitute the sword and shield respectively for practice and safety purposes. When one exponent attacks, the opponent blocks it and then counter-attacks the player.
The traditional Gatka was generally at public display during religious processions but Gatka Association of Punjab (Regd.) and National Gatka Association of India (Regd.) have standardized the Gatka as a game in India and continuously promoting, popularizing and reviving it as a game in Punjab as well as in India similar to other amateur games.
It is a unique art to defend, display fighting skills and exercise self control which is the best part of the martial art Gatka. It is also meant to enable youth to stay healthy and agile by keeping them away from the menace of drug abuse and other intoxicants to lead a disciplined and pious life. Earlier, only the boys could be seen performing this art but now girls have also adopted it and are performing well.
GATKA, A COSMOPOLITAN SPORT
The present martial art form, Gatka, now a sport in India, is a style of fighting only with sticks between two Gatka players, intended to simulate the sword and focuses on infusing physical, spiritual and mental fitness. No sharp edged weapons are used in the transformed Gatka game. The martial art, in which Gatka (wooden stick) is used as a weapon, is called Gatkabaazi. Because the main weapon used in this martial art is Gatka, so people often call this martial art Gatka itself, instead of Gatkabaazi.
The Panjab University at Lahore, now established at Chandigarh, is the pioneer university in Gatka sport as it had been organizing inter-college and inter-varsity Gatka tournaments in sports costume regularly before partition of India. Mr. K.S Akali had drafted Gatka rules for the University in 1936 for playing Gatka as a game. Gatka was being played as a game in the colleges of Punjab till 1972 but after this the Gatka suffered a lot as all the colleges & universities of Punjab discontinued its regular competitions. It was the Punjabi University Patiala that initiated to host its inter-college and university level Gatka competitions in the year 2001.
On the pattern of 1936 rules, the National Gatka Association of India (NGAI), a registered apex body, has for the first time, formulated and standardized the in-depth Gatka Rules and Regulations. It adopted the conventional sports costume (i.e. Track Suits or T-shirt with lower, Sneakers and a Headgear for protection) as a new dress code to play Gatka game in all competitions to make it a Cosmopolitan Sport which was earlier almost on the verge of extinction.
The National Gatka Association of India has been providing training to the budding Gatkebaaz through workshops, seminars and camps under the new Gatka rules. It’s a humble effort to revive a forgotten and dying art having a historical significance. It is informed that the Punjab Olympic Association has recognized the Gatka Association of Punjab. The Education Department, Government of Punjab has also incorporated the Gatka game into the Punjab schools and universities sports calendar on the persistent appeals of Gatka Association of Punjab.
The Gatka Association of Punjab had constituted a Sikh Martial Art Research and Training Board (SMART Board) to grant scholarships to the aspiring research scholars doing Ph.D. in the field of martial art, especially on Gatka in order to enrich the historical literature on Sikh martial art. Prominent personalities have been included into the SMART Board to verify and accept the research projects.
The Gatka organizations are passionately desiring from the Punjab as well as Central Governments to award due gradations of Gatka game certificates at par with the certificates of other games.