Paul,

The trickle of Indian guns out of the country actually began after the ban on hunting in 1976. After 1984 it became a flood. The bulk of guns shipped out to the UK and the USA were by some large Indian dealers and by Westley Richards whose owner Walter Clode bought them for pennies on the dollar and resold for huge profits. These days, Purdey, Holland and Holland and several others advertise for old guns in India though supplies of the old guns are drying up.

My feeling is that many of the guns that came to Australia probably came due to the efforts of the Anglo-Indian community which began migrating to Australia in the early 1970s under the then in practice "White Australia Policy." Many of them were hunters and were familiar with guns and their values to an extent that Indians, at the time, were not. And many of the old royal houses were badly in need of money with the withdrawal of Privy Purses and Previleges, and they found it convenient to sell many of these old guns off. That said, there still are some palace armouries still in existence in India (armouries were able to circumvent the 3 guns per person limit of 1984 because they were, essentially, dealers) and these armouries have a very large number of old guns with them though their owners are hardly in a position to shoot or sometimes even maintain them in decent shape.

Good hunting!