Again, these weapons aren't from Kalashnikov factories in Russia but from Bulgaria.
India continues to be one of the world's largest importers of AK-type rifles. Despite the induction of the indigenous INSAS rifle after the Kargil war in 1999, Indian army units in militancy affected regions continue to be equipped with the AK. The Rashtriya Rifles, an army formation that fights insurgency in J&K since 1990, has two crossed AK-47s as its unit insignia. Sanjay Dutt was first jailed for possessing an 'AK-56' in 1993 (actually, a Norinco Type-56, the Chinese variant of the AK). The rifle also filtered into Indian folklore. Among the first AKs purchased for the Indian army were the Czech-made VZ-58, an assault rifle that outwardly resembled the AK. The army then turned to Romania, Bulgaria and erstwhile Czechoslovakia that made cheap AK variants. Many of these captured weapons were ironically, made in Russian factories like Izhmash and Tula. It equipped itself with some of over 12,000 AKs it had captured from insurgents in the mid-1990s. The Indian army looked at short term solutions. But while the US replaced the bulky, self-loading M14 with the lighter M16 in the early years of Vietnam, the DRDO-designed indigenous Indian Small Arms Systems or INSAS assault rifle that promised deliverance, was still years away from induction in the 1980s. These were lessons the US army had come up against fighting in Vietnam in the 1960s. The rifle was rugged and required little maintenance and survived after being buried in muddy fields and immersed in water. Optimized for close range combat, light, easily-concealed, its tremendous firepower of over 600 rounds a minute, leveled the playing field for inferior forces.
The Belgian FN-FAL L1A1 7.62 mm Self Loading Rifle license produced by the OFB since the 1962 war was obsolete by the 1980s when the Indian army found just why militants in Punjab, Kashmir and Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka favored the AK-47. The venerable rifle had been outgunned by Chinese variants of the AK rifles. 303 Lee Enfield rifle after the debacle of the 1962 war. The Indian army had discarded its bolt-action. Now, its capitalist successor, the Russian Federation, felt the pinch from over a dozen countries that continued to manufacture the rifle.Īn Andhra Pradesh police commando with a Bulgarian-made AK-47. But had not patented the design as rigorously. The Soviet Union had aggressively exported AK designs along with its ideology. They had instead, Vishniyakov told me ruefully, bought poorer cousins made in the Eastern Bloc. What had baffled the arms factory executive was that India had however not purchased the pinnacle of Soviet engineering design, the ruggedly simple AK-47 from Russia. Roughly two-thirds of India's military hardware, MiG fighters, T-72 tanks and Kilo-class submarines, were of Soviet origin. Russia hoped to sell the OFB the rights to make genuine AK-47s. Andrey Vishnyakov, Izhmash's fast-talking sales manager told me it was purely business. Izhmash, the Russian factory that has produced the rifle since it was accepted for service in 1947, however did not pursue the copyright violation. The pretense was so thinly veiled that the weapon was even called the 'AK-7'. On display there was a knock-off of his assault rifle with its distinctive banana shaped magazine. He stood transfixed at the Indian Ordnance Factory board pavilion. The star attraction at Defexpo, a biennial defence exhibition in the capital, was being escorted around the stalls at Delhi's Pragati Maidan. General Kalashnikov visited India only once, in February 2004 where he kicked up a row. The ceremony for the legendary gun designer, who died aged 94 on December 23, was attended by President Vladimir Putin.
Photo: Sandeep Unnithan.Russia's greatest small arms designer Lt General Mikhail Timofeyvich Kalashnikov was buried with full state honors in Moscow on December 27. Indian army soldiers with Romanian AK-47s in Srinagar.