Thug: The True Story Of India's Murderous Cult

by Mike Dash

  Once received, the Board’s Collections were bound up in enormous volumes, containing on average well in excess of 1,000 pages of manuscript apiece. Virtually all of these volumes contain several individually paginated files. Thus a reference in the notes to, say, ‘BC F/4/1898 (80685) fos. 66–188’ refers to folios 66 to 188 of file number 80,685, which can be found in volume 1,898 of the Collections.

  The broad mass of material from which the Board’s Collections were drawn also survives, and very often includes material of considerable importance that for some reason or other was never selected for presentation to the Board. This material originally formed three distinct archives maintained by the Company Presidencies of Bengal, Madras and Bombay, which have been combined to form the bulk of the OIOC. Although I have searched for relevant material in the archives of Madras and Bombay, virtually all of the most important files were produced by the Bengal Presidency, which had responsibility for the districts in northern and central India where the anti-Thug campaign began and was prosecuted with the greatest vigour.

  The great majority of this material can be located in two series, known as the Bengal Political Consultations (BPC) and the Bengal Criminal Judicial Consultations (BCJC), which record the weekly transactions of the Governor General in Council as he and his colleagues worked their way through huge piles of correspondence and reports sent in by political officers, magistrates and judges stationed all over the Presidency. A week’s work on either might typically produce somewhere between 25 and 60 separate ‘Consultations’, or written summaries of the decisions taken regarding the lengthy submissions received in each category, most of which include copious extracts from the submissions themselves. Unlike the Board’s Collections, the Consultations were, unfortunately, not paginated and have to be referred to by the number and date of the relevant discussion. Thus a reference to ‘Consultation No. 46 of 18 Jan. 1811, BCJC P/130/27’ is the best that can be done to guide the interested reader to important extracts from the records of the Court of Circuit, Bareilly, Zillah Etawah, for the second Sessions of 1810, as preserved in volume 27 of the Judicial Consultations of the Bengal Presidency – a document that, as it happens, runs to the better part of 40 outsize manuscript pages.

  Several lesser series of India Office papers were also consulted. In London, letters relating to Thuggee sent by the Court of Directors of the East India Company to the Governor General and the Governors of the various Presidencies are preserved in series E/4, ‘Correspondence with India: Court of Directors despatches, judicial, 1795–1858’, and reports relating to the Indian prison system in series V, ‘Official Publications’. The Records of the Office for the Suppression of Thuggee and Dacoitee (T&D) in the National Archives of India (NAI) cover the period from the late 1820s to the 1840s and beyond, but most of the Office’s holdings for the vital years prior to 1835 are duplicated in London. More than a thousand pages of William Sleeman’s official correspondence have also been preserved and are currently to be found in the Satpura Bhawan in the State Archive of Madhya Pradesh in Bhopal, alongside a peculiarly organized collection known as the ‘Appa Sahib and Thuggee papers’ (peculiar in that Appa Sahib, the fugitive Rajah of Nagpore, had absolutely no connection to Thuggee or the anti-Thug campaign). Again, a large portion of the material in Bhopal is duplicated elsewhere: Sleeman’s correspondence after 1832 in the T&D papers in the NAI, and the Appa Sahib and Thuggee papers in one of only two significant printed collections of documents relating to Thuggee – an anonymously edited 1939 volume entitled Selected Records Collected from the Central Provinces and Berar Secretariat Relating to the Suppression of Thuggee, 1829–1832, printed in Nagpore.

  Two significant private manuscripts relating to Thuggee survive. Letter-books once belonging to Thomas Perry, magistrate at Etawah in the first years of the nineteenth century, can be found in the Department of Manuscripts at Cambridge University Library, while the ‘Collections on Thuggee and Dacoitee’ made by one of William Sleeman’s assistants, James Paton, in Oudh in the later 1830s are preserved among the Additional Manuscripts series in the British Library. The former collection contains some of the earliest surviving British papers relating to Thuggee; the latter, transcriptions of a fascinating series of ‘Dialogues with Thugs’ together with a number of illustrations, drawn under the supervision of various informers, showing the members of Thug gangs going about their work.

  Documentation concerning the British response to Thuggee is thus relatively complete. What is sorely lacking is material presenting an Indian perspective. Neither the independent states of the Subcontinent nor the Thugs themselves compiled any notable collection of contemporary documents. This omission is only partly remedied within the pages of the single most important book published on the subject, William Sleeman’s two-volume Ramaseeana, which incorporates a considerable quantity of roughly edited primary material. Sleeman’s own collection of official papers, published in the second volume, is an important supplement to the surviving manuscript sources discussed above. More illuminating by far, however, are Sleeman’s own ‘Conversations with Thugs’, published in the first volume, which consist of transcriptions of several lengthy interrogations of a number of Thug approvers, during which Sleeman’s prisoners discussed many of their most celebrated crimes as well as recounting traditions, customs and beliefs that go entirely unreported elsewhere. Ramaseeana is far from an ideal source; the ‘Conversations’ have been translated and perhaps edited, losing nuance in the process, and the Thug prisoners answer only the questions Sleeman saw fit to pose, which are not always those we might wish to ask today. Nonetheless, the material – containing as it does numerous repetitions, contradictions and even statements that fly directly in the face of opinions that Sleeman himself put in print – does seem to have been published in a more or less raw state. The ‘Conversations’ offer the most fascinating and compelling insight into the thoughts and motives of the Thugs themselves.

  Books

  Among secondary sources, the most important contemporary works are probably Edward Thornton’s Illustrations of the History and Practices of the Thugs – a book that, while cribbed largely from Sleeman, does include some material not featured in Ramaseeana – and Sleeman’s own Report on the Depredations Committed by the Thug Gangs of Upper and Central India From the Cold Season of 1836–37. This book, despite its title, actually concerns itself with events going as far back as 1827–8.

  Modern scholars have contributed enormously to a full understanding of Thuggee and have done much to place the subject in its proper context – something contemporary writers conspicuously failed to do. Among their works, I have found those of Christopher Bayly, on Indian society and British colonial intelligence, Ranjan Chakrabarti and Basudeb Chattopadhyay, on crime and policing, and Radhika Singha, on criminal justice, the most illuminating.

  Author’s note

  ‘Small editions’ Máire Ni Fhlathúin, in ‘The Travels of M. de Thévenot Through the Thug Archive’, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society series 3, 11, 1 (2001) p. 34, notes that the print run of William Sleeman’s Ramaseeana (1836) – by far the most influential single book on the subject – was only 750, and that no more than 100 of these copies were sold privately in the five years following publication. The remainder were distributed to East India Company stations in India itself.

  Meadows Taylor and Confessions of a Thug See Nick Mirsky’s preface to the Oxford paperback edition of 1986, particularly pp. vii–viii.

  Number of murders exaggerated This point is dealt with in detail in the appendix.

  James Sleeman See his Thug, Or A Million Murders pp. v, 235–6.

  Gustav Pfirmann See his 1970 PhD thesis Religiöser Charakter und Organisation der Thag–Brüderschaften.

  Hiralal Gupta In ‘A critical study of the Thugs and their activities’, Journal of Indian History 37 (1959).

  Stewart Gordon See particularly ‘Scarf and Sword: Thugs, Marauders and State-Formation in 18th Century India’, IESHR 4 (1969).
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br />   Christopher Bayly See particularly Empire and Information: Intelligence Gathering and Social Communication in India 1780–1870.

  Radhika Singha See particularly her A Despotism of Law: Crime and Justice in Early Colonial India.

  Parama Roy See her ‘Discovering India, Imagining Thuggee’ in The Yale Journal of Criticism 9 (1996), and also Amal Chatterjee, Representation of India 1740–1840: The Creation of India in the Colonial Imagination.

  ‘What made the Thugs unique …’ A secondary characteristic was the fact that the Thugs invariably posed as inoffensive travellers and almost always attempted to lure their intended victims into a false sense of security before attacking them.

  ‘A small core …’ Gordon, p. 429.

  ‘The existence of band lore …’ Singha, pp. 183–4.

  ‘A new generation of historians’ The most important study promises to be Kim Wagner’s Thuggee and the ‘Construction’ of Crime in Early Nineteenth Century India (unpublished Cambridge PhD thesis, 2004), access to which has, however, been restricted until January 2007.

  Prologue: The Road to Lucknadown

  Chupara and its environs RV Russell, Central Provinces District Gazetteers: Seoni District pp. 169–70.

  Bunda Ali’s party Deposition of Deena, 25 Mar. 1823, BC F/4/1404 (55517) fos. 224–5; deposition of Chutaree, BC F/4/1309 (52131) fo. 264; deposition of Motee, ibid. fos. 296–300; William Sleeman, Ramaseeana, or a Vocabulary of the Peculiar Language Used by the Thugs I, 169–71. There is some confusion in the primary source material as to the number of children in the party, one witness, Deena, saying there were two of them, while Chutaree and Motee stated there was only one; but Ramaseeana’s detailed description of two girls – one an infant, the other one of marriageable age – appears definitive.

  … he was a moonshee … Sleeman, Ramaseeana I, 167, mentions the service of a moonshee named Bunda Ali with Sir John Doveton, then the commanding officer of the Fourth, Prince of Wales’s Own, Regiment, Madras Light Cavalry, stationed at Jhalna. The Thugs who encountered him there were not completely certain that their Bunda Ali was the same man as the one murdered by a different gang at Lucknadown, but Jhalna was a possession of the Nizam of Hyderabad, and the primary sources consistently refer to the Ali killed in 1823 as ‘the Hyderabad moonshee’ (cf. Smith to Prinsep, 19 Nov. 1830, Sel.Rec. 47). All in all, therefore, it seems very likely that the two men were one and the same. The explanation for the presence of a native of Hindustan in the Deccan, incidentally, must be that the Fourth recruited almost exclusively from the Carnatic, where Tamil is spoken. Presumably this made it necessary to send north for a properly qualified teacher of Hindustani, the Indian language most commonly taught to British officers. William Wilson, Historical Record of the Fourth ‘Prince of Wales’s Own’ Regiment Madras Light Cavalry, pp. 57, 64, 92.

  A moonshee’s work For most Britons arriving in India, the moonshee was an unwelcome visitor whose services were necessary but seldom appreciated. East India Company officers were supposed to arrive in the country with a working knowledge of the native languages, and tuition in Hindustani and Persian was a compulsory feature of the curriculum at Fort William College in Calcutta, where, from 1800, cadets received instruction before receiving their first posting. Nevertheless, an increasing number of officers made the point of remaining virtually ignorant of the local tongues, even though very few of the men they were expected to command spoke any English at all. Albert Hervey, who arrived in India in1833 and was one of the more conscientious cadets in the Madras army, in which Bunda Ali served, wrote of his own experiences: ‘I fagged hard with the Moonshee, who used to come to me every day for four hours. I held conversations with my teacher in English; every sentence uttered was put down on paper in Hindustanee, and the next day what I had written down in Hindustanee, was brought to me fresh written by the Moonshee, and those sentences I re-translated into English, so that I not only gained a knowledge of the words, but was able to read the common writing, which was of the greatest assistance. I fagged thus hard for three months, working away without relaxation, except for meals.’ Albert Hervey, A Soldier of the Company pp. 23–5.

  Daughter’s age Deposition of Sing Rae Wasilhakee, 19 March 1823, BC F/4/1309 (52131) fo. 251. Sing Rae was a member of the party that exhumed the moonshee’s grave, and his statement was based on an examination of the girl’s remains.

  Condition of the local roads See any contemporary gazetteer. Chitnis, in Glimpses of Maratha Socio-Economic History pp. 79–83, comments that in the old Maratha territories that came to form the bulk of the central provinces ‘there were few good roads, but many pathways or tracks’.

  Nagpore territory Edward Thornton, A Gazetteer of the Territories Under the Government of the East India Company II, 279.

  Thieves recalled by Harriet Tytler Anthony Sattin (ed.), An Englishwoman in India p.25. Greasing or oiling oneself to evade capture seems to have been commonplace among the thieves of this period; see Thankappan Nair (ed.), British Social Life in Ancient Calcutta (1750 to 1850) pp. 31, 76.

  Interrogation at Jhalna Sleeman, Ramaseeana I, 167–8. Sleeman, who recorded this evidence in 1835–6, gives no exact date for the incident, and the Thugs concerned dated it to around 1822–3. In fact the meeting must have occurred after Ali’s appointment as moonshee, which cannot have been earlier than 1818, but before the Fourth was posted to Seroor towards the end of 1819. The regiment did not return to Jhalna until 1822, by which time Doveton – whose presence is mentioned by the Thugs – had retired. Most probably the meeting took place some time in November or December 1818, given the distance that the Thugs had travelled since the onset of the cold season in order to reach the Deccan. Wilson, op. cit. p. 64.

  Bunda Ali’s salary Wilson, op. cit. p. 57.

  Bunda Ali’s worth Each of the 100 Thugs involved in the murder of Bunda Ali’s party received a minimum of two rupees as their share of the loot, those who participated in the killings themselves taking a little more. Deposition of Anundee, 2 Feb. 1824, BC F/4/1309 (52131) fos. 254–5.

  Two were chuprassees … Smith to Prinsep, 19 Nov. 1830, Sel.Rec. 46–7.

  … a full day’s journey … Cf. Thomas Bacon, First Impressions and Studies from Nature in Hindustan I, 126.

  On the road to Lucknadown Smith to Prinsep, 19 Nov. 1830, Sel.Rec. 46–7; Russell, op. cit. pp. 1–5, 169, 176–8.

  The Lucknadown affair Deposition of Deena, 25 Mar. 1823, BC F/4/1404 (55517) fos. 224–5; summary of the case of Essuree, BC F/4/1309 (52131) fos. 147–50; verdict on Bhawanee, ibid. fo. 161; verdict on Sheikh Bazeed, ibid. fo. 169; verdict on Sadee Khan, ibid. fo. 228; deposition of Sing Rae Wasilhakee, 19 Mar. 1823, ibid. fos. 251–2; deposition of Anundee, 2 Feb. 1824, ibid. fos. 253–5; deposition of Chutaree, n.d., ibid. fos. 264–70; deposition of Dulput, n.d., ibid. fo. 285; deposition of Motee, ibid. fos. 296–300; Consultation No. 27 of 25 July 1831, BPC P/126/26, OIOC; Sleeman to Smith, 19 Oct 1830, Sel.Rec. 56–61; Ramaseeana I, 169–71. For the time of the party’s arrival at their camp, see BC F/4/1309 (52131) fo. 284, which puts it at 4 pm; for the time of the murders, see ibid. fo. 264.

  ‘Bring tobacco’ This appears to have been the most common of a number of signals employed by different Thug gangs to precipitate their murders. Cf. ‘Deposition of Poorun Phansigar’, n.d. [1829], Sel.Rec. 31; Edward Thornton, Illustrations of the History and Practices of the Thugs p. 373.

  1 ‘Murdered in Circumstances Which Defied Detection’

  Etawah’s climate These unpleasant conditions have improved significantly over the last two centuries, thanks to the completion of forestry and irrigation works in the Doab.

  The courtroom See Fanny Parks, Wanderings of a Pilgrim in Search of the Picturesque I, 122–3, for a description of a typical cutcherry, or magistrate’s office, of the period.

  A hideous discovery Perry to Dowdeswell (Secretary to Government, Calcutta), 7 Apr. 1811, Add.Mss. 5376 fos. 8–8v, CUL; for wounds see Court of Circuit Bareilly, Zillah Etawah, 2nd S
essions of 1810, in Consultation No. 46 of 18 Jan. 1811, BCJC P/130/27, OIOC.

  Bodies in the wells ‘It is stated,’ one sceptical official observed two decades later, ‘by the magistrate of Fatehpur, a district in which these offences are common, that in the course of a year in his jurisdiction not less than 120 persons fall into wells, it may therefore be suspected that in many instances persons are reported to have been murdered by thugs who have in truth died from some other accident.’ See ‘Court of directors on policy towards thagi’, 6 Apr. 1830, in Philips (ed.), Correspondence of Lord William Cavendish Bentinck I, 425–6.

  ‘The inhuman precaution’ Perry to Dowdeswell, 1 Mar. 1812, Add.Mss. 5376 fos. 13–17.

  Earlier murders ‘Comparative statement of murdered bodies found on the High Roads and in the wells in the Zillah of Etawah in the years 1808, 1809 …’, 7 Apr. 1811, ibid. fos. 8–8v.

  … the number of murders dwarfed … Perry to Dowdeswell, 1 Mar. 1812, ibid. fos. 13–17.

  … Kingdom of Oudh… This was the appellation the British gave it. In fact Oudh was, at this time, nominally still a part of the Mughal Empire and was ruled over by a nawab, or governor, who while in effect quite independent was not actually a king.

  History of India The interested general reader should find that three recent narrative histories – Lawrence James’s Raj: The Making and Unmaking of British India and John Keay’s India: A History and The Honourable Company: A History of the English East India Company – sketch in the background very well. Christopher Bayly’s Rulers, Townsmen and Bazaars: North Indian Society in the Age of British Expansion, 1770–1870 is the most thoughtful and detailed exploration of the social history of Hindustan in this period.