India gripped by guns as ritual (9)
I believe the answer is:
ordinance
'ritual' is the definition.
(thesaurus)
'india gripped by guns' is the wordplay.
'india' becomes 'i' (phonetic alphabet: alpha, bravo, charlie etc.).
'gripped by' means one lot of letters goes inside another.
'guns' becomes 'ordnance' (ordnance can mean guns or artillery).
'i' put into 'ordnance' is 'ORDINANCE'.
'as' is the link.
(Other definitions for ordinance that I've seen before include "Authoritative decree" , "Rule" , "religious service maybe" , "Bye-law of a city government" , "Edict, order" .)