Thuggee
Thuggee was a crime phenomenon in the Indian subcontinent that saw gangs of thugs traverse the region murdering and robbing travellers, often by strangling.
The thuggee phenomenon came to prominence in the early 19th century, in the course of which the British colonial authorities came to view the thuggee gangs collectively as a religious fanatic fraternity purported to have ancient origins. Colonial administrator William Henry Sleeman led a policing campaign against thuggee in the 1830s that saw the Thuggee and [Dacoity Department|Thuggee Department] formally established in 1835 and legal innovations that facilitated convictions. Thuggee was portrayed as 'hereditary criminality' and provided a precedent for the 1871 Criminal Tribes Act.
Contemporary historians are generally sceptical of the colonial-era portrayal of thuggee, though they offer varying hypotheses as to the actual nature of the phenomenon. Historians' reinterpretations differ on the significance of religion to thuggee and the extent to which there was an archetypal thug. Some scholars reject the historicity of the colonial sources and therein hold the thuggee phenomenon to be entirely imagined by or an invention of the colonial regime.
Following the publication of the 1839 novel Confessions of a Thug, thuggee became a Victorian era|Victorian] sensation. Notable depictions in modern popular fiction include the 1984 film Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.
Etymology
translates to 'swindler' or 'deceiver' and is derived from the Sanskrit word स्थग meaning 'to cover' or 'to conceal'. The earliest generally accepted usage of the word dates to 1350 and the Janamsakhis evidence that 'thag' came to be used more or less interchangeably with 'robber' in precolonial India. The English word thug is from the same roots. The word literally meaning 'strangler' was used interchangeably with 'thug' during the 19th century and tended to be the term used in the Madras Presidency. refers to the practise of thugs and the crime itself.History
During his travels across India in the 7th century, the Chinese monk Hsüen Tsang was attacked by pirates on the Ganges and narrowly escaped being sacrificed to Durga. On another occasion and while he was journeying to Pataliputra, Hsüen Tsang was told while passing a temple that no foreigner who entered it ever came out again. These incidents have been interpreted as early accounts of thuggee. Kim A. Wagner asserts the view that, by this rationale, every account of banditry and human sacrifice in ancient India could be linked to the thugs of the 19th century. According to a 14th century chronicle by Ziauddin Barani, Sultan of Delhi Jalal-ud-Din Khalji deported 1,000 arrested 'thags' from Delhi to Bengal sometime between 1290 and 1296, however the chronicle makes no mention of what they were arrested for. The 15th–16th century poet Surdas wrote illustratively of a 'thag' luring a pilgrim with sweets and wine and then murdering and robbing them.Following his travels across India in 1666–1667, Jean de Thévenot wrote in 1684 of the "cunningest robbers in the world" operating in the Delhi area that strangled their victims with a running noose and used attractive women to lure travellers. In 1672, Mughal Empire|Mughal emperor] Aurangzeb issued a specifying the punishment to be meted out to stranglers, including those that were "habituated to the work" or were notorious for it among the local population. John Fryer wrote of his experience in 1675 witnessing the execution of fifteen members of a bandit gang near Surat that had strangled and robbed passing travellers using a cotton bowstring. In 1785, James Forbes recounted how an Indian acquaintance had witnessed the arrest of several men that belonged to a tribe he referred to as phanseegars, describing how they would deceive and strangle travellers. A November 1797 tax list prepared for Maharaja Daulat Rao Sindhia covering 20 villages across the of Parihara and Sursae lists 318 houses as belonging to thugs, who were subjected to a soldier tax.
Colonial era
Etawah crisis (1809–1811)
The British colonial authorities first encountered what they would come to refer to as thuggee in Southern India in 1807 and in Northern India in 1809. In April 1809, ten bodies were discovered in a well in the Etawah district, with the Magistrate of Etawah James Law tasked with investigating the killings. Amid the failure of Law's inquiries and the discovery of four strangled native soldiers in a jungle within his jurisdiction in July, the two magistrates of the neighbouring Aligarh and Farrukhabad districts were assigned to the matter. In November, Law's assistant made the first officially recorded reference to 'Thugs', describing them as "a set of people... who have from time immemorial carried on their abominable and lamentable practices" in secret.Following the discovery of two strangled travellers in December and the initiation of a more thorough investigation, Law wrote: "It is presumed that the murdered persons were travellers and fell victims to that detestable race of monsters called T,ugs... The T,ugs have infested the whole of the Doab, and this district in particular, from time immemorial, and they are so strongly leagued together, that scarcely an instance has ever been known of their having betrayed each others secrets." More bodies were discovered throughout December and early 1810, in the midst of which Law was removed from his post, and when questioned by an investigation in February, local reported that the perpetrators were "Thugs". The findings reported by the colonial authorities in the north were nearly identical to those reported in the south in 1807 despite there having been no formal exchange between the Madras and Bengal presidencies.
Law's replacement Thomas Perry offered a large reward of Rs 1,000 for information leading to the arrest of the perpetrators. After eight suspected thugs were arrested in March 1810, a young thug who had been adopted by the gang after they had murdered his father and uncle agreed to testify at trial in return for a pardon and claimed that there were some 1,500 thugs based in Etawah. At the trial in November he demonstrated for the court how the gang would strangle their victims with strips of cloth and testified to having been on five expeditions with the thugs, witnessing 95 murders. However, he repeatedly changed his testimony regarding the extent of his own involvement and ultimately had his evidence rejected for repeated perjury, whereafter Perry was forced to release the suspects.
1810s and 1820s
Regulation VI of 1810 first referred to Thugs as a distinct criminal category, alongside Dacoits, Cozauks, and Buddecks. Though many individuals were convicted and sentenced to death by the circuit courts in the early attempts to combat thuggee, all the cases were ultimately dismissed by the superior courts owing to strict evidentiary requirements. In October 1812, Nathaniel John Halhed was tasked with leading an expedition to introduce British law and order and to set up a in Sindouse, where thugs were retained by Rajput as local mercenaries. The operation caused the thugs to disperse into neighbouring Maratha territory, though led to the death of a British officer for which the village of Murnae was razed the following month. Regulation VIII of 1818 effectively allowed notorious Dacoits to be held indefinitely, with Regulation III of 1819 extending its provisions to also apply to Thugs. In the 1820s the colonial authorities began to adopt a new strategy of handing captured thugs over to local rulers and chiefs to circumvent the British colonial legal system and convict them by proxy.The first Thugs were convicted in Sagar in 1826, whereby two were sentenced to be hanged and a further 29 sentenced to transportation for life. This was possible due to Sagar and Narbada being established in 1818 as 'Non-Regulation Territories', meaning that the Agent at Sagar could operate outside the usual Company regulations with virtually unlimited powers. In 1829 in the Bombay Presidency, two Thugs were sentenced to hanging, six to transportation, and one to life imprisonment for the murder of six men carrying Rs 100,000 of valuables in February. Later that year, the Agent at Mahidpur Captain William Borthwick arrested 74 Thugs for the murder of five travellers. Up until this point, efforts to combat thuggee were led by local authorities and the case marked the first time the central government intervened to ensure that the Thugs were convicted and to develop a judicial argument that saw Thugs treated in the same vein as pirates. Forty of the Thugs were hanged, 20 sentenced to transportation for life, and a further 12 received limited sentences.
Centralised campaign (1830–1839)
Captain William Henry Sleeman, as assistant to the Agent at Jabalpur, began assigning approvers that he had in custody to escort detachments of troops along exposed routes and his methods led to the arrests of 24 thugs in late 1829. Sleeman and Borthwick's arrests led to an extensive exchange of information between officials and the sharing of approvers, resulting in a spate of arrests over the course of 1830. In October, Sleeman contributed an anonymous letter to the Calcutta Literary Gazette entitled Thugs that recounted the execution of 11 Thugs and asserted that thugs were fanatical worshippers of the, including Kali. The letter also asserted that the thugs were headquartered at the Vindhyachal Temple in Mirzapur where their expeditions were planned by the temple priests. He further provided details on the alleged religious nature of thuggee and demanded that the government "put an end in some way or other to this dreadful system of murder, by which thousands of human beings are now annually sacrificed upon every great road throughout India".The letter made an impression on the Government, with the Chief Secretary to the Governor-General of India George Swinton writing the following day that the destruction of "this Tribe would... be a blessing conferred on the people of India" comparable to the abolition of sati. Swinton was the prime instigator within the Government of efforts to combat thuggee and, while the author of the letter remained anonymous, appointed Sleeman Agent at Sagar later that month. Agent of the Sagar and Narbada Territories Francis Curwen Smith submitted a plan in November that he had written with Sleeman and which called for an officer to be appointed Superintendent for the Suppression of Thugs, who would send Thugs to be tried in the Sagar and Narbada Territories. The report marked the first portrayal of thuggee as an irredeemable identity, based on the Thug's purported personality and thuggee gangs often involving sons of members. Governor of Bengal Lord William Bentinck declined to establish a specific office for thuggee, though provided Sleeman with 50 to pursue and apprehend the gangs.
Anti-thuggee operations continued under the direction of Smith and Sleeman whereby approvers were sent out with detachments of troops to disinter bodies and point out their former associates, with the campaign's supply of approvers growing as more Thugs were caught. In November 1830, Sleeman captured thuggee leader Feringheea after holding captive his relatives, whereafter he became Sleeman's most valuable approver. In 1832 and 1833 respectively, officials were despatched to the Doab and Rajputana to oversee anti-thuggee operations there. Thugs were convicted based on circumstantial evidence and approver testimony and, across 1832 and 1833, 145 Thugs were hanged, 323 sentenced to deportation, and 41 given life in prison by the Sagar and Narbada courts. Sleeman successfully played different thuggee factions off of one another to secure approver testimony, exploiting the varying loyalties between different families and castes within the gangs, for example between Hindu and Muslim thugs.
In 1834, Smith began to call for a central agency for the suppression of thuggee that would station officials in more territories. Backed by an official report, the Government established the Thuggee Department in January 1835 and appointed Sleeman 'General Superintendent of the operations for the suppression of Thuggee' in March. In 1836, river-thugs operating on the Ganges were discovered in Bihar, Orissa, and Bengal, whose methods of throwing their victims overboard meant that there was very little circumstantial evidence with which to convict them. Sleeman used this to argue that new regulation was required to enable convictions and the groundbreaking Act XXX of 1836 was passed, which made simply belonging to a thuggee gang punishable by life imprisonment with hard labour. The term 'Thug' was not defined and it thereafter became a legal umbrella-term for a range of crimes such as poisoning, while the original thuggee gangs that could be traced back to Sindouse had practically ceased to exist by this point. Dacoity was added to Sleeman's responsibilities in 1838 as thuggee activity had been effectively suppressed and, in 1839, Sleeman declared that thuggee had been eradicated, marking the end of the campaign. As of 1840, 3,869 Thugs were estimated to have been hanged, 1,564 sentenced to deportation, 933 imprisoned for life, and 86 acquitted while 56 became approvers and 208 died before trial.
File:The_Thugs_of_India_-_Halt_at_the_Shrine_of_Ganesh,_by_August_Schoefft,_ca.1841.jpg|thumb|upright=1.3|The Thugs of India: Halt at the Shrine of Ganesh by August Schoefft,. The painting depicts a Sikh being deceived by thugs and a murder about to happen.
In 1839, Philip Meadows Taylor published the historical fiction novel Confessions of a Thug, which derived much of its material from Sleeman's writings. Thuggee thereafter became a Victorian sensation, with Queen Victoria herself requesting a copy of Taylor's book, witnessing the birth of a literary tradition. Among those to write about thuggee were Eugène Sue in his 1844 book Le Juif errant and Mark Twain in his 1897 book Following the Equator.
The thuggee campaign of the 1830s provided a model for the later shift to a centralised police bureaucracy and established an all-India framework for policing and surveillance. The Thuggee and Dacoity Department remained in existence until 1904, when it was replaced by the Central Criminal Intelligence Department. The legal model of thuggee constructed by Sleeman set a precedent that culminated in the 1871 Criminal Tribes Act. Though the CTA was repealed in 1949, tribes considered criminal still exist in India today.
Historical evaluations
According to Kim A. Wagner and a theory first posited by Indian historian Hiralal Gupta in 1959, the proliferation of thuggee came about due to the expansion of British rule that constrained the previously dynamic military labour market and East India Company policy that led to the disbandment of native standing armies in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The theory holds that this left scores of armed men and itinerant mercenaries unemployed, some of whom resorted to thuggee, with Wagner positing that the disbanded soldiers, who were often paid with loot, merely continued their predatory lifestyle. Wagner asserts the view that the thugs were "no more than a species of robber... best understood in the context of banditry rather than some vague notion of a religious sect or caste-like entity". He judges that thuggee could be distinguished from other types of banditry based on the combination of secrecy, deception, and the murder of the victims. Wagner concludes that thuggee was a longstanding phenomenon predating British colonial rule and that there was not a single representative thug archetype.Martine van Woerkens, who authored the first scholarly monograph on thuggee in 2002, conversely theorises that the thugs had once been authentic worshippers of Kali but that their religious construction had broken down over time and their community identity had disintegrated due to geographical dispersion. Mike Dash surmises that thuggee could not be considered 'organised crime' in the modern sense of the term as the thugs lacked a central organisation or complex hierarchy, describing them as "merely one product, among many, of India’s lawless interior". Dash describes the distinguishing feature of thugs as being that they invariably murdered their victims before robbing them.
Beyond mere sensationalism, Wilhelm Halbfass notes that the Thuggee phenomenon appealed to the British sense of destiny in India, whereby it was used to legitimise colonial rule. Van Woerkens describes the colonial-era portrayal of thuggee as a projection of British fear and anxiety arising from the prospect of ruling over a people they knew little about. According to Wagner, some officials "clearly" exploited the Government's concern over thuggee to assume more authority, with Sleeman's opportunism merely part of a wider trend that he refined. The thuggee campaign also saw the British authorities assert their right to 'paramount authority' in India in territories belonging to independent rulers. Thuggee became one of the most potent images of colonial lore and fiction and historians in the colonial tradition have cited the thuggee campaign in particular to redeem the record of Company rule.
The only sources that exist on thuggee are those written by Sleeman and his colleagues, meaning that historians have no alternative accounts with which to confirm, balance, or invalidate the colonial sources. Some historians hold thuggee to be a myth invented by the colonial regime in order to extend its control over the itinerant population or to expand its legal jurisdiction. In apportioning no historical value to the so-called 'thuggee archive', some scholars hold thuggee as described in Western accounts to be largely imaginary. Historian Parama Roy asserts that the colonial discourse on thuggee was highly self-referential, discrepancies between approver accounts were smoothed over, and approvers were driven to authenticate the official knowledge of thuggee. In opposition to this, Wagner argues that, though the colonial representation cannot be taken at face value, it was not constructed in a vacuum and historians can clearly identify and evaluate the biases that permeate the texts due to them also including the questions asked by the British officials. Alexander Lyon Macfie concludes that, though the thuggee archive should be seen in part as an Orientalist construction, it is broadly accurate in its presentation of most of the facts.
Culture and beliefs
Methods
Thuggee gangs embarked on seasonal expeditions for months at a time, typically leaving in Kartika after the autumn harvest and returning around Asharh at the start of the monsoon season. Among the main victims of thuggee were sepoys, soldiers of native rulers, and Hindu and Muslim pilgrims. The thugs would ingratiate themselves among parties of travellers on the basis of mutual protection, adopting a range of disguises as soldiers in search of work, merchants, mendicants, wealthy people, Brahmins, sepoys,, or travellers. Though thugs would sometimes murder for modest sums, they preferred wealthy victims and surveilled travellers to ascertain their wealth.The thugs would distract their victims or entice them to look up, upon which, using a handkerchief with a knot tied at the end as a sort of handle, one thug would strangle the victim while another held their hands. Thugs might strangle their victims in the night or wake them up, pretending it to be dawn, and take them to a secluded spot along the road. They sometimes administered seeds to their victims in order to incapacitate them before killing them. Thugs would quite often also murder their victims with swords, knives, or poison, whereafter their bodies would be thrown into a well or a, or buried in a hole dug with pickaxes.
File:Thugs 1850s reenactment.jpg|thumb|left|upright=1.1|1850s photograph of thuggee approvers at Jubbulpore reenacting their method of strangulation, as they were occasionally asked to do for Western tourists
There were no eyewitnesses since every member of the party was murdered and little circumstantial evidence as the act was done by stealth, while items such as a, scarf,, wrap, cord, or even a knife and sword were likely to be found on innocent travellers. It was also a recorded practice among thugs to stab their victims in the face to prevent them from being recognised. Wagner describes thuggee as being "very close to being the 'perfect crime'", noting that its inexpensive nature made it accessible to a wide range of people. The 1836 Thuggee Act was later used to prosecute child trafficking and robbers who non-lethally poisoned their victims. Amid controversy over the jurisdiction of the Thuggee and Dacoity Department, thuggee was defined in Act III of 1848 to include poisoning as a species of thuggee and.
Religious beliefs
The significance of religion to thuggee is a matter of debate among historians, epitomised by Jorge Luis Borges in 1923 when, after reading Confessions of a Thug, he posed the question: "Were the Thugs brigands who sanctified their profession with the cult of the goddess Bhowani, or was it the cult of the Goddess Bhowani that turned them into brigands?" The thugs worshipped different manifestations of the, of which Bhavani was most often referred to, alongside Kali and others, in what composed a variety of traditions. They believed their actions to be sanctioned by the Devi. The thugs also held a myth of divine origins based on a story from the Devi Mahatmya in which Kali fought with the demon Raktabīja, aided by a group of goddesses called Matrikas— in the thugs' version, they took the place of the Matrikas and Kali defeated the final demons with strangulation. It remains unclear whether the myth held Kali to have created the progenitors of thugs, as Sleeman claimed. Though the British were fascinated by the fact that Muslims worshipped Hindu deities, religious syncretism in India was common. Some Muslim approvers identified Bhavani with Fatima and therein maintained their belief in monotheism, while others worshipped Bhavani but disowned her upon turning King's evidence.Depositions of thugs conducted in the 1830s contain accounts of rituals and ceremonies that they partook in during their expeditions. In the interviews, Sleeman's colleague Captain James Paton specifically honed in on the thugs' religious orientations, asking loaded questions based on Christian thought. When conducting the interviews, Sleeman and Paton were predominantly interested in the goddess-worship of the thugs, their observance of rules and omens, and the variance between different gangs' customs. Wagner holds their "extreme interest" in matters of religion to "very likely" have influenced the manner in which the approvers discussed their own identities. Thugs ate consecrated in honour of the Devi and made offerings to her prior to their expeditions. They strongly adhered to omens, with a bad omen such as an owl chirping at the wrong time being enough to abort a murder. Thugs' rules forbade them from murdering women or members of certain lower castes.
Dr. Richard C. Sherwood, who authored the first scholarly exposition on thuggee out of the Madras Presidency in 1816, was the first to mention religion in connection with the phenomenon. Sherwood described the phansigars as highly superstitious, who, though some of them were Muslim, held Kali as their tutelary deity. In making an argument for the inadequacy of regulation in 1818, Perry's assistant made the earliest known reference to thuggee having a religious element, whereby he claimed that they "worshipped and sacrificed a kid to obtain the auspicious protection of their deity". By the early 1830s, the religious elements of thuggee had been sensationalised by Sleeman and brought to the fore, leading to an institutionalised portrayal of thugs as soldiers of the Goddess for which they engaged in human sacrifice.
According to Wagner and historian Radhika Singha, the religious beliefs and practices of those who practised thuggee were common in the wider population. Wagner states that "Robbers, who did not worship a tutelary deity, perform or entertain certain beliefs concerning the moral sanction of their acts would have been truly exceptional in an Indian context". Singha asserts that the examining officers of the Thuggee Department were "in fact becoming acquainted with popular religion and culture but refracted through the prism of criminality". Dash similarly surmises that the motives behind thuggee weren't religious in nature, concluding that the thugs' beliefs were closer to folklore than a distinct faith. Wagner notes that ordinary dacoits, who were never assumed to have religious motivations, also held a puja before and after robberies. According to Wagner, the thugs' invocation of Bhavani prior to their execution was in fact the war cry of Marathas and Rajputs. He argues that the incentive for thuggee most likely had nothing to do with religion and that the thugs' pursuit of legitimacy and moral or social status, for which they ascribed a ritual and religious meaning to their acts, lay behind the aspects of thuggee that attracted the attention of the British.
In contrast to this, van Woerkens places the thugs in a Tantric tradition based on Halbfass's work linking them to the, religious killers briefly mentioned by Kumārila Bhaṭṭa that believed to be a meritorious act, and Yoginis in the Netratantra that sacrifice human beings in order to unite their victims with Shiva.
Based on interviews in which Thugs were asked how it was that they were about to be hanged if they were divinely protected, van Woerkens concludes that the thugs had once been true but had since neglected their rituals and the rules of their vocation. According to Dash, thugs who killed indiscriminately were harshly denounced by thugs from other districts. Van Woerkens posits that the thugs' internal belief system had collapsed due to an "unbounded lust for loot" that caused their quest for salvation to devolve from ritually controlled violent actions to mass crimes for which the goods they stole no longer constituted divine payments in return for the sacrificial victims. She concludes that the thugs didn't constitute a sect since they lacked a.
Customs and place in society
According to the of Sindouse in 1810, the locals supported themselves by cultivating the land for eight months of the year and for the remainder by horse trading or committing thuggee. A from Parihara stated in 1812 that the thugs had been living in the area for generations and never cultivated the land, but brought back valuables from their expeditions. He also stated that the local took care of their families while they were gone and earned interest off of loans given to the thugs. According to Wagner, the thugs were also commonly and interchangeably referred to by themselves and others as sepoys. The thugs borrowed military terminology in their use of to mean gang leader and for when several bands joined together. Evidenced by the 1797 tax list, Wagner concludes that thuggee was completely institutionalised into the local power structure whereby thugs were among the armed retainers under the patronage of zamindars. He further asserts that, rather than encompassing a "counter-society... fully excluded from the 'law-abiding' sedentary society", links between various thuggee gangs and various communities evidence a loose-knit "itinerant underworld" that encompassed overlapping networks of people who committed various crimes.Thugs commonly spared the children of their victims and a large number of them were consequently adopted. Girls were married off to the sons or relatives of their adoptee, thus avoiding the costs of a dowry, while boys tended to go to childless parents in the context of high infant mortality rates. Thugs didn't always spare children and, according to Wagner, only well-off thugs with a secure home base tended to adopt them.
The thugs used a criminal argot called, which was compiled by Sleeman from interviews with more than a dozen Thugs in his 1836 seminal work on thuggee Ramaseeana. Sleeman perceived the "peculiar language" as being the key to uncovering thuggee and collected the vocabulary with a focus on establishing the thugs as rigidly governed by fixed rituals, rules, and omens. Sherwood had also published in 1816 a list of 57 "slang terms and phrases" from phansigars imprisoned in Madras, 20 of which also appeared in Sleeman's vocabulary derived from Thugs in northern and central India.
Thugs used the argot to communicate in front of their victims, to identify other thugs, and to define identity and status. The argot involved giving secondary meanings to established words and phrases so as not to arouse suspicion, such as using to give the signal for the murders to take place. Similar argots were used by many different groups in 19th century India, with Wagner surmising that Ramasee wasn't exclusive to thugs. Wagner disputes that Ramasee could be thought of as a language, or even as a fixed argot, and asserts that it was also employed by traders, jugglers and peddlers.
Hereditary nature
During the 1830s, British officials propagated a representation of thuggee and thugs as irredeemable "hereditary criminality" Though Sherwood described the phanisigars as "hereditary murderers and plunderers", he posited that their lack of compassion and ruthlessness was due to their never having known an alternative rather than an inherent evil. According to an 1834 report by the Thugee Department officer in Rajputana Donald Friell McLeod, the thugs believed that they all originated from a group 15 generations prior that settled around Delhi under the protection of the Mughal emperor. At this point, they didn't commit any crimes but were forced to flee after murdering one of their associates, giving rise to seven nomadic Muslim clans. Starting from the 1797 tax list, Sleeman made detailed genealogies of thugs that he published in Ramseeana, though they tended not to stretch further back further than three generations and included the names of adopted children.According to Wagner, while many thugs followed a family tradition and were rooted in their village, some were 'occasional thugs' who fell in and out of the practice. Wagner asserts that thuggee was not a uniform phenomenon and that neither were the individuals who practised it. Singha considers the voluminous material generated by the Thuggee and Dacoity Department on the hereditary nature of Thugs and Dacoits to in reality disguise the failure of the colonial regime to set up mechanisms of policing and prosecution capable of tying the specific offense to the individual offender.
Notable groups
British officials recorded extensive lists of subgroupings and the colonial-era material on thuggee alludes to some 40 different 'classes' of Thugs. Notable groups include:- Sindouse Thugs: based around the town of Sindouse on the Yamuna river, which as of 1812 was on the British-Maratha border while the neighbouring village of Murnae was on the Maratha side. Feringheea heralded from the area. After the 1812 campaign, the Sindouse thugs resettled in villages in Jagammanpur and Jalaun or fled further south. Laljee, the head zamindar of Sindouse who had protected the gangs and given them financial advances, was arrested in December 1812 amid a Rs 5,000 reward for his capture and sentenced to life in prison with hard labour.
- Telingana Thugs: from the Telangana region in the north of the Deccan. Other groups of thugs from the area reportedly refused to mix with them on the basis that they were descended from cattle herders and itinerant tradesmen, and thus of a lower caste.
- Moltanee Thugs: deriving their name from the city of Multan. They supposedly strangled their victims with the leather thongs they used to drive their oxen, suggesting that their main occupation was cattle herding and transportation.
- Soosea Thugs: recorded as being based in Rajastan and Malwa, operating in Gujarat, Khandesh and in Rajasthan. The biggest thuggee haul has been attributed to a Soosea gang from Rajputana, amounting to Rs 200,000 seized in Khandesh in the early 19th century.
- River Thugs: operated on the Ganges in Bihar, Bengal, and Orissa. Numbering approximately 300, they tricked passengers onto their boats and strangled them, whereafter they would throw the bodies overboard. Discovered by the British authorities in 1836, they were largely suppressed by 1840.
- Megpunna Thugs: a loose association of thieves discovered in the vicinity of Delhi that included itinerant groups such as the Banjara and Naik, but otherwise shared a similar modus operandi, argot, and religious beliefs to common thugs. They murdered parents in order to sell on their children, typically strangling them with reins, and were officially classified as Thugs in 1839. According to Dash they originated in 1826 and never numbered more than 200 men and women, being mostly restricted to Delhi and Rajputana.
- Tashma-baz Thugs: thimble-riggers found on the outskirts of Cawnpore in 1848 that were legally classified as Thugs due to their having murdered and robbed a few travellers that they had met on the roads.
Approvers
Jubbulpore School of Industry
By the late 1830s, 56 approvers had been returned to Jubbulpore Central Jail, where they were kept in a lockup outside the prison gates away from the other inmates. Though the authorities believed that the approvers couldn't be reformed, the Jubbulpore School of Industry was established in 1837 as a manufactory where they and their families learnt trades. The approvers were kept in a small walled village, separate from their families who were kept under strict surveillance in a village adjacent to the manufactory. They were generally allowed to meet their families at mealtimes and were given allowances in return for their work that, after deducting food and clothing, went to their families. Sons of the approvers were often employed with their fathers, while women assisted in spinning textiles. The School of Industry's first products were bricks and it was able to become self-sustaining, selling into the Central Provinces markets where the cost of importing from elsewhere was prohibitive.They were later taught to make tents and carpets, and by 1847 produced 130 tents and 3,300 yards of carpet yearly. A carpet made by the Thugs was exhibited at the Great Exhibition in 1851 and they later made a carpet for Queen Victoria that, as of 2005, remained on display in the Waterloo Chamber at Windsor Castle. Items made by the Thugs were also exhibited at the 1862 International Exhibition in London and the 1867 Exposition Universelle in Paris.
As of 1870, the institution housed 158 Thugs, 202 Dacoits, and their over 1,500 wives and children. The productivity of the School declined heavily as the Thugs aged and by 1888, it was no longer making a profit. According to Sleeman who visited the School three times between 1843 and 1848, the Thugs were initially keen to talk with visitors about their prior careers but by his last visit he noted they had become ashamed of their past lives. By the start of the 20th century, the School of Industry had effectively ceased to exist and became a reformatory school for juvenile offenders.
In popular culture
Literature
- The 1826 novel Pandurang Hari, or Memoirs of a Hindoo by William Browne Hockley provides in Chapter 11 the earliest British fictional account of the Thugs. In this novel they are depicted only as thieves, not as murderers.
- The 1839 novel Confessions of a Thug by Philip Meadows Taylor is based on the Thuggee cult, revolving around a fictional Thuggee named Ameer Ali. Confessions of a Thug popularised the word "thug" in the English language.
- The 1844–1845 serial novel The Wandering Jew by Eugène Sue features a fictionalised version of Feringheea as 'chief of the Thugs'.
- Several of Emilio Salgari's Sandokan novels describe a struggle with the Thugs. Many of his novels are about Sandokan's adventures, and feature the Thuggee as enemies of the heroes. The first of them – I misteri della jungla nera – was originally published with the title Gli strangolatori del Gange. His novel I misteri della giungla nera revolves around the main character Tremal Naik's fight to save Ada Corisant, the daughter of a British officer, who has been kidnapped by the Thugs.
- The 1886 novel Kalee's Shrine by Grant Allen and May Cotes features a British female Thug.
- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle introduces the Thugs in his 1887 short story "Uncle Jeremy's Household". Miss Warrender, the Anglo-Indian governess in this story, is the daughter of the fictional Thuggee prince Achmet Genghis Khan.
- Bram Stoker's short story "Gibbet Hill" centres on Thuggee-like children attacking a traveller in England.
- The 1931 crime novel The Case of the Frightened Lady by Edgar Wallace makes an indirect reference to Thuggee murders by featuring "Indian scarves" which are used as murder weapons, as do its 1940 and 1963 West German film adaptations.
- The fictional DC Comics villain Ravan, a member of the Suicide Squad, is a modern-day member of the Thuggee cult.
- Ameer Ali thug na peela rumal ni gaanth, a novel in three parts by Harkisan Mehta, is a fictionalised account of the Thug Amir Ali.
- The Strangler Vine by M.J. Carter, a novel set in Calcutta in 1837, sees two representatives of the East India Company search for a missing author deep within the territory of the murderous Kali-worshipping Thugs.
- Firingi Thagi, a Bengali-language novel by Indian author Himadri Kishor Dashgupta, is a fictionalised rendering of Sleeman operations against the Thugs.
- Ebong Inquisition, a Bengali-language novel series by Indian writer Avik Sarkar, also features events in which the Thuggees are the key participants, with references to Sleeman, Feringhea, Khuda Baksh.
Film
- The 1939 film Gunga Din centres around three British soldiers' conflict with a resurgent sect of Thuggee cultists.
- The Thuggees and their method of killing are made reference to in the 1945 film Hangover Square.
- The Stranglers of Bombay is a film which is centered around a lone British officer who investigates and uncovers the doings of the Thuggee cult.
- Kali Yug, la dea della vendetta and Il mistero del tempio indiano, films by Mario Camerini, feature Klaus Kinski as Thug leader.
- Help!, a film which revolves around The Beatles' encounters with an Eastern Cult, is thought to parody the Thuggee.
- In Our Man Flint, the character Derek Flint wears a turban and shouts "Kali!" while shooting a gun into the air to safely empty a club of its patrons before setting off an explosive.
- Sunghursh, an Indian Hindi film, gives a fictionalised account of a Thug who tries not to join his family business, which is Thuggee.
- Thagini an Indian Bengali-language film about a lady Thug, directed by Tarun Majumdar and based on a short story by Subodh Ghosh.
- Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, set in 1935, showcases a fictionalised Thuggee cult as the primary antagonists, led by Mola Ram, a Thuggee High Priest of Kali.
- In the 1988 film The Deceivers, based on the 1952 John Masters novel of the same name, Pierce Brosnan plays William Savage, a tax-collector for a British-Indian company who goes under cover in 1825 to investigate a Thuggee sect.
- Theeran Adhigaaram Ondru, about a police officer that encounters a band of ruthless thieves with Thuggee roots.
- Thugs of Hindostan, an Indian Hindi-language action-adventure film about a band of Thugs that resists the Company rule. The film stars Amitabh Bachchan, Aamir Khan, Katrina Kaif, Fatima Sana Shaikh and Lloyd Owen.
- Thugs of Ramaghada, an Indian Kannada-language film based on band of Thugs who try to rob rich gangsters, directed by Karthik Maralabhavi and starring Ashwin Hassan, Chandan Raj and Mahalakshmi
Television
- The Black Company, a dark fantasy series by Glen Cook, features a cult called the Deceivers, largely based on the Thugs, which plays a major role in the later novels.
- In Highlander: The Series season 4 episode 9, "The Wrath of Kali", the immortal Kamir is presented as the last of a Thuggee cult who tries to steal a statue of the Hindu goddess Kali and murder the half-Indian professor who acquired it for her university.
- Grimm, in season 4, episode 6, entitled "Highway of Tears", Nick, Hank, and Wu confront a "Phansigar," a Wesen that worships Kali with a sacrifice, every 3 years.
Videogames
- The strategy game Age of Empires III: The Asian Dynasties features Thuggees and dacoits, both of whom are available to players as hired mercenaries.
Colonial literature
- describes Bruce's book as having "brilliantly exemplified" what was at the time the conventional account of thuggee.
- Reprinted from .
- Originally printed in the Madras Literary Gazette in 1816.
- revised and annotated in 1915 by Vincent A. Smith.
- Sleeman's grandson, .
- Originally printed in the Calcutta Literary Gazette in 1830 and anonymously contributed by William Henry Sleeman, as stated in a footnote on p. 472.
Modern scholarship