Winston:
India's Ishapore Rifle Factory had been manufacturing SMLEs for several decades when their military adopted the FAL and the 7.62x51 NATO cartridge circa 1960.
Their priority was to get their front line infantry units armed with the new weapons as quickly as possible, but they also needed to equip a large number of secondary police, Border Guards and auxilliary troops with 7.62x51 weapons ASAP.
They re-engineered the "India Pattern" SMLE using improved metallurgy and heat treatment. It was a shrewd way to get the weapons they needed from the resources they had at the time, like an entire arsenal already tooled-up for the basic design and a workforce with the skills and experience to produce large numbers of the new weapon in short order.
A nice bonus was that those troops wouldn't need retraining, as they were already using an essentially identical item.
Exhaustive testing proved that with the new EN steel the SMLE action was easily capable of handling the higher pressures of the new round. Production continued until about 1967, when they were finally able to produce enough FALs to go around.
Contrary to rumor and legend, there were no "conversions" from the original .303 to 7.62x51. All RFI-produced 2A and 2A1 rifles were originally manufactured for the NATO round.
IMO, these are one of the true bargains on the milsurp market. Most that I've seen show a good deal of handling wear on the wood and exterior metal finish but have VG to virtually pristine bores. Many have demonstrated remarkable accuracy for a general issue milsurp with 1.5 MOA or better 100 yd. groups reported by credible sources (EG: Holt Boddinson) with high quality surplus ammo from examples with nice barrels.
