by Mike Dash
Maratha tax on Thugs Tax was levied every three years at the rate of Rs.24–8–0 per household, and a total of 218 Thug homes were taxed. The local zamindar was supposed to send all of the proceeds – less his own fee of 100 rupees and a few expenses – to his overlord, but in practice he contrived to levy taxes from many Thugs whose names did not appear on the rent-rolls, and so made a considerable profit. Ibid. and ‘List of Thug families, who paid the tax on Thugs to the Gwalior state’, Ramaseeana II, 150–225.
Oldest Thugs Amongst those questioned by Sleeman in 1835 were Khandee, who claimed to be 83 years old, Nundun, 85, and Lalmun, who was 90. The latter might possibly have been engaged in Thuggee as early as 1760. Ramaseeana I, 173. Nidha, one of the Thugs questioned by Perry, had belonged to the gang of a certain Khunjah, who had been a Thug since 1785. ‘Deposition of Nidha’, Add.Mss. 5375 fos. 123–5.
Thug genealogies WW Hunter, in The Annals of Rural Bengal p. 72, refers to Thug genealogies charting as many as 20 generations, which implies a history of at least 400 years. There may well have been a significant element of embroidery and one-upmanship inherent in these purely oral accounts, however; for example, the great Thug leader Feringeea was on occasion claimed to be the product of either 10 or 17 generations of Thugs, rather than the eight he actually enumerated for Sleeman. See Sleeman to Duncan, 7 June 1832, T&D G1 fo. 12, NAI; Ramaseeana I, 149–50. As such claims are impossible to corroborate they cannot be accepted at face value.
Alexander the Great Consultation No. 46 of 18 Jan. 1811, BCJCP/130/27.
Expulsion of the Thugs from Delhi Paton papers, Add.Mss. 41300 fos. 125–6, BL; Ramaseeana I, 68.
Seven families of stranglers The original Thug clans, according to these oral traditions, were named Barsote (Bursote, Bursoth), Bhais (Bhys, Bhyns), Kachuni (Kuchunee), Hattar (Huttar), Garru (Ganoo), Tandel (Tundel) and Rathur (Bahleen or Buhleem), Robert Russell and Hira Lal report (The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India IV, 560), elaborating on Ramaseeana I, 68, 72, 222–5. The Tandels were said not to have lived in Delhi, and the Bahleens fled furthest from the capital; in Sleeman’s day it was said that almost all of them lived south of the Nerbudda river. Various sons and daughters of the seven clans married into other families, the Thugs believed, and members of these other families subsequently took up the trade. At various times several groups of Thugs claimed precedence; thus the Thugs of Oudh boasted to Paton that ‘up to the present day [they] were the Chief Thugs!’ Paton papers fos. 126–126v. There is, however, no evidence that any of the other groups accepted these claims.
Hindus and Muslims Most Thugs had several aliases and it is difficult to be certain about their backgrounds. Reynolds, in ‘Notes on the T’hags’, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 4 (1837) p. 203, observes: ‘No judgement of the birth or caste of a T’hag can be formed from his name, for it not unfrequently happens that a Hindu T’hag has a Musulman name, with a Hindu alias attached to it; and vice versa with respect to T’hags who are by birth Muhammedans.’
‘Here’s to the spirits …’ Account of Sheikh Inaent, Ramaseeana I, 162.
Camp followers Ibid. p. 144.
First use of ‘thug’ Kim A. Wagner, ‘The Deconstructed Stranglers: A Reassessment of Thugee’, Modern Asian Studies 38 (2004) pp. 942–3.
‘stranglers and assassins’ CE Bosworth, The Mediaeval Islamic Underworld p. 104; AS Tritton, ‘Muslim Thugs’, Journal of Indian History 8 (1929) pp. 41–4. The other categories of criminal described by Uthman al-Khayyat were housebreakers (the ‘man who works by night’), con men (the ‘man who works by strategems’), highwaymen (‘gentlemen of the road’), and ‘grave-despoilers’.
Sometimes the methods of the stranglers and the sahib radkh were combined. Another Arab chronicler, Al-Jahiz, writing in his Book of Animals, refers to a group of highway robbers called ‘combiners’ – ‘so called because they combine strangling with “giving scent”’, the contemporary criminal slang for smashing a man’s face open with a rock. The striking similarity between the modus operandi of the stranglers described by Al-Jahiz and that of the Thugs in the India of the early nineteenth century does not, of course, prove any connection between the two groups. It would be more plausible to suggest that some early Indian Thug might have been inspired to adopt the methods described by Al-Jahiz after reading his book.
Thévenot Jean Thévenot (1633–67) published an account of India’s stranglers in his Travels III, 41; it was reprinted in Russell and Lal, op. cit. IV, 559.
Fryer John Fryer travelled through much of India between the years 1672 and 1681 and described his experiences in a book made up of letters that he wrote to home: A New Account of the East Indies and Persia … 1672–1681. He writes of the stranglers he encountered in this third letter, ‘A Description of Surat and Journey into Duccan’. Upon their capture, the whole group was strung up ‘half a foot from the ground’, after which their legs were cut off and they were left ‘miserable Spectacles hanging till they dropped of their own accord’. One member of the gang, Fryer adds, was a mere boy who ‘boasted, That though he were not Fourteen Years of Age, he had killed his Fifteen Men’.
Aurangzeb’s farman Singha, op. cit. pp. 14–15, 189.
Varieties of Thug Sleeman, Ramaseeana I, 95–7, 132, 144, 161–4, 180–81, 238–9; Martine van Woerkens, The Strangled Traveller pp. 132–5.
Jumulud Deen Sleeman, Ramaseeana I, 97.
Phrases and purses Ibid. I, 67, 116; Thornton, Illustrations p. 332; Reynolds, ‘Notes’ p. 210.
‘I was one day walking …’ Sleeman, Ramaseeana I, 238–9.
Service with other gangs Ibid. I, 180, 182, 185, 264.
Thugs amicably share loot Cf. deposition of Feringeea on the Doolea/Malagow affair, BC F/4/1483 (55515) fos. 169–71. For an instance of cooperation between Thugs from widely distant parts of India, see Thornton, op. cit. p. 209.
4 Mr Halhed’s Revenge
Early arrests and the decline in murdered bodies Perry to Dowdeswell, 17 May 1810, Perry papers, Add.Mss. 5375 fos. 136–8, CUL; ‘Comparative statement of murdered bodies …’ Add.Mss. 5376 fos. 8–8v. Whether Perry’s figures proved that the Thugs had been thrown into disorder, were disposing of their victims more securely, or had simply moved on to safer territories cannot be said with any certainty; probably a combination of all three factors was at work.
Difficulty of securing a conviction Perry to Dowdeswell, 17 May 1810, Add.Mss. 5375 fos. 136–8; Perry to Dowdeswell, 6 Oct. 1812, Add.Mss. 5376 fos. 17–18v.
More bodies around Etawah Perry to Dowdeswell, 1 Mar. 1812, Add.Mss. 5376 fos. 13–17.
Flight of Thugs to Sindouse Halhed, ‘Report on the state of the Pergunnahs of Sindouse from actual observation’, 18 Oct. 1812, BC F/4/389 (9872) fos. 75–89.
Sindouse Ibid. Halhed to Dowdswell, 12 Oct. 1812, ibid. fos. 11–15; Bengal Judicial Consultation No. 29, 31 Oct. 1812, in ibid. fos. 3–15; Edward Thornton, Illustrations of the History and Practices of the Thugs, pp. 472, 474–5; idem, A Gazetteer of the Territories Under the Government of the East India Company and of the Native States of the Continent of India II, 240–1; Ramaseeana I, 223; Stockwell (Assistant magistrate, Etawah) to Wauchope (Magistrate, Bundelcund), 10 June 1815, in Ramaseeana II, 366–8. HL Drake–Brockman, District Gazetteers of the United Provinces, Etawah pp. 96–8; Kim Wagner, ‘The Deconstructed Stranglers’, Modern Asian Studies 38(2004) pp. 957–60. The ravines of the northern Chambel valley remain notorious, even today, for their dacoit gangs. For an interpretive study of banditry in the region, see Paul Winther, Chambel River Dacoity (PhD thesis, Cornell University, 1972).
Main Thug residence Molony (Commissioner, Nerbudda territory) to Stewart (Acting Resident, Gwalior), 1 Oct. 1820, in Ramaseeana II, 132–3.
Numbers of Thugs ‘Examination of Laljee’, 11 Dec. 1812, Add.Mss. 5376 fo. 38, CUL; Halhed to Dowdeswell, 12 Oct. 1812, BC F/4/389 (9872) fos. 11–15; Halhed, ‘Report on the state of the Pergunnahs of Sindouse …’, op. cit.; deposition of Suntoke R
ae, 24 Aug. 1834, in Thornton, Illustrations pp. 472–4.
Fort in disrepair; travellers vanish ‘Report on the state of the Pergunnahs of Sindouse’, op. cit.
Police Ibid.; Halhed to Hawkins (court of circuit judge, Roy Barelly), 13 Oct. 1812, BC F/4/389 (9872) fos. 52–7.
Lieutenant Maunsell See East India Register 1811 and 1812. Maunsell was born in Dublin on 28 July 1780 and was a Bengal Army cadet from 1802 to 1803. In 1811, he was ranked sixth in seniority among the 22 lieutenants in the regiment, having been Gazetted on 21 September 1804. The Register for 1812 notes his death in action against ‘banditti’. The lieutenant was, incidentally, the only one of the 50 officers of the Bengal Army who died that year to be killed in action.
Military detachment Halhed to Dowdeswell, 31 Oct. 1812, BC F/4/389 (9872) fos. 3–10.
Orders to Halhed Perry to Dowdeswell, 1 Mar. + 10 Oct. + 16 Dec. 1812, Add.Mss. 5376 fos. 13–17, 19, 27–9.
Halhed See East India Register 1800–1812; Rosane Rocher, Orientalism, Poetry and the Millennium p. 81; ‘Translation of the acknowledgement of Ghoolam Hossyn Thug …’, 11 Apr. 1810, Add.Mss. 5375 fos. 117–22; for Allygurh, see Halhed to Dowdeswell, 18 Oct. 1812, BC F/4/389 (9872) fos. 63–75.
Halhed advances into Sindouse When Halhed advanced cautiously into the pargana of Sindouse that October, he had only a sketchy idea of the problems he was likely to encounter.
Even at that late date, the East India Company possessed no more than a limited understanding of the interior of India. For much of the eighteenth century, any voyage inland from Bengal or Bombay had been regarded as ‘a considerable adventure’. The British road network stretched no further than Benares until the 1780s, when it was belatedly extended to Lucknow and Hyderabad; as late as 1808, even the Commander in Chief of the Bengal Army could concede that ‘beyond the Jumna all is conjecture’.
The Company had, in fact, once possessed a rudimentary intelligence network in central India. It had been run by merchants based in the Mughal capital, Agra, and provided regular reports on the activities of the imperial court, supplemented by snippets of news from the further reaches of the Subcontinent picked up from travelling merchants and visiting indigo planters. But intelligence-gathering in Agra slowed dramatically as the Mughals declined, and little information of any value was received from the interior after 1740. The only regular reports available after that date came from a group of Indian clerks known as ‘newswriters’, who made their living by attaching themselves to native courts and circulating bulletins on local events and news likely to be of interest to other rulers. These reports were of only limited value to the Company. They contained a good deal of unreliable gossip, and the newswriters themselves, being predominantly Muslim, were far from experts concerning the nuances of Hindu society. While their bulletins did provide British administrators with the information needed to keep abreast of politics and military affairs, they contributed little to their understanding of India itself.
It was not until 1785 that the British made a concerted effort to improve their information. The old Persian Office in Calcutta – hitherto an obscure bureau charged with copying correspondence in what was then the lingua franca of Indian diplomacy – was turned into an intelligence-gathering department, and thereafter the Company’s interest in collecting and sifting intelligence grew to such an extent that the Holkar of Indore, preparing to renew his lengthy struggle against the British in 1808, was perturbed by the invaders’ ‘favourite object’ of receiving ‘intelligence of all occurrences and transactions in every quarter’.
The activities of the Persian Office, and the increased familiarity of the Company with the Indian interior – the product of Wellesley’s wars of conquest – meant that the British were by 1812 a little better-informed regarding conditions in the central provinces. They were familiar with the endemic disorder that plagued much of the land between Oudh and Hyderabad, and aware, at least in the broadest terms, of the prevalence of bandits, rebels and predatory mercenaries throughout the Native States. But even their improved intelligence had distinct limits. Most Company officers still had, at best, a crude understanding of Indian society. Knowledge of Hindu religious institutions, village life and the ‘world of women’ was practically non-existent. And there was a general and uneasy awareness, outside the Presidency towns, of the appalling isolation of the scattered European communities in the interior: a handful of men, and scarcely any women, adrift in a sea of tens of millions of potentially hostile ‘natives’ whose religion and culture – and, thus, motives and activities – seemed impossible to comprehend.
The loneliness felt by British officers stationed inland – particularly those who had failed to master the languages of the Subcontinent – was palpable. Almost all suspected they were cheated and lied to by the servants who acted as their intermediaries with the Indian world. ‘Even if they served their masters loyally,’ remarks one writer on this subject, ‘they moved in realms of life and thought which they wished to keep hidden from their rulers. The basic fear of the colonial officer or settler was thus his lack of indigenous knowledge and ignorance of the “wiles of the native”. He feared their secret letters, their drumming and “bush telegraphy”, and the nightly passage of seditious agents masquerading as priests and holy men.’ It was, in general, all too easy to imagine conspiracies being hatched and devilry done in the void stretching south into Gwalior. Dennis Kincaid, British Social Life in India, 1608–1937 pp. 129, 171, 193; Christopher Bayly, Empire and Information pp. 6–8, 47, 58, 87, 89, 143–5, 151, 162, 174, 178; Susan Bayly, Caste, Society and Politics in India p. 84; George Bearce, British Attitudes Towards India, 1784–1858 pp. 41–2; William Dalrymple, White Mughals pp. 50–3.
Halhed’s poisoning Halhed to Dowdeswell, 31 Oct. 1812, BC F/4/389 (9872) fos. 3–11.
Chourella Halhed to Dowdeswell, 12 Oct. 1812, ibid. fos. 11–15.
Murder of Maunsell Halhed to Dowdeswell, 23 Oct. 1812, ibid. fos. 27–39.
Mutilation of Maunsell’s corpse Ibid.; Hawkins to Dowdeswell, 4 Nov. 1812, ibid. fos. 47–51.
Retaliation Halhed to Dowdeswell, 30 Oct. 1812; Dowdeswell to Halhed, 7 Nov. 1812, ibid. fos. 36–9; Halhed to Dowdeswell, Consultation 81 of 30 Oct. 1812, ibid. fos. 130–5
Captain Popham Bengal Despatches Judicial, Ceded and Conquered Territories, 30 Sept. 1814, E/4/680 fos. 564–6, OIOC.
Bounty ‘Deposition No. 15’, enclosure in Perry to Dowdeswell, 15 Jan. 1813, Add.Mss. 5376, CUL.
Burning of Murnae Consultation No. 77, 20 Nov. 1812, BC F/4/389 (98721) fos. 112–14; Consultation No. 79, 22 Nov. 1812, ibid. fos. 127–9.
Size of the village No full account of Murnae’s size or population appears in the contemporary sources, but it is described as a ‘large village’ in Perry to Dowdeswell, 17 Dec. 1812, Add.Mss. 5376 fos. 29–31. Maratha tax records suggest that it was larger than its neighbour, Sindouse. Ramaseeana II, 153.
Remains of houses ploughed under Christopher Kenna, ‘Resistance, banditry and rural crime: aspects of the feudal paradigm in North India under colonial rule c.1800–1840’, in E Leach and S Mukherjee (eds.), Feudalism: Comparative Studies p. 25. Halhed also seized the village crops, see Consultation No. 77 of 20 Nov. 1812, BCJC P/131/7. ‘The burning of the village of Murnaee,’ Popham wrote, ‘has alarmed the evil[ly] disposed dreadfully, and will be a warning, I am persuaded, to them to wish to remain in peace and quiet.’ Further reprisals, he believed, would be counter-productive: ‘I am in some degree apprehensive that were more villages burnt it would drive the people in the Mahrattah frontier to desperation, particularly the sufferers who, having lost their all, might when the detachment should be withdrawn unite and make predatory incursions within our frontier.’ Popham to Halhed, Nov. 1812, BC F/4/389 (9872) fos. 127–9.
Aftermath in Murnae Bengal Despatches Judicial, Ceded and Conquered Territories, 30 Sept. 1814, E/4/680 fos. 564–6, OIOC.
Thugs’ flight from Murnae According to Perry to Dowdeswell, 16 Dec. 1812, Add.Mss. 5376 f
os. 27–9, ‘the whole of the discription of Public Offenders called Thugs have left their houses and fled into the Dekhan’. But he, of course, had a vested interest in believing this to be so. See also FC Smith, ‘Report on the Sessions of 1831–32’, 20 June 1832, in Sel.Rec. pp. 104–5; Ramaseeana I, 160, 226.
Capture of Laljee Halhed to Perry, 15 Oct. 1812 BC F/4/389 (9872) fos. 95–102; extract from Judicial letter from Bengal, 30 Jan. 1813, para. 144, ibid. fos. 1–2; Strachey (British Resident, Gwalior) to Halhed, 1 Nov. 1812, ibid. fos. 120–22; Consultation No. 65 of 3 Dec. 1812; Consultation No. 133 of 5 Dec. 1812, BCJC P/131/8.
Fate of Laljee and his men ‘Deposition of Suntoke Rae, son of Laljoo Kuchwaha, 24 Aug. 1834’, in Thornton, Illustrations of the History and Practices of the Thugs pp. 471–5.
Thugs settle south of the Jumna ‘They now live’, Perry reported in 1815, ‘in a number of the Gwalior villages, stretching over an irregular tract of country from the right bank of the Kooaree to the confines of Duttea’, paying taxes to the local zamindars as hitherto and enjoying their protection. Stockwell to Shakespear, 7 Aug. 1815; Stockwell to Perry, 11 Aug. 1815, printed in Thornton, op. cit. pp. 322–7.
Khyrooah ‘They have always been insolent and overbearing people,’ the official added, ‘and their trade has been highway robbery. They hold their estate under Jhansee, and have from fifteen to twenty villages which they hold at a quit rent of 600 rupees a year.’ Consultation No. 18 of 18 Mar. 1831, BPC P/126/27, OIOC. See also Smith to Prinsep, 8 Dec. 1830, BC F/4/1309 (52131) fos. 43–8.
Lack of British interest in the Thugs’ arrest One Thug captured by the Marathas related that just four of Laljee’s followers were sent with him for trial ‘at the requisition of the Mynpooree Magistrate, who might have had the whole if he liked, but he wanted only four’, and that even these men were acquitted when the only witness against them, a Thug named Aman who later became one of the Lucknadown gang, ‘became so much frightened’ while taking a Hindu oath ‘that he let the cup of Ganges water fall out of his hands before the Magistrate, who did not in consequence believe him; and they were all four released, though they were all present at the murder of Lieutenant Maunsell’. See Ramaseeana I, 219–21, which also contains Thukoree’s account of the visits of the great demon to the Thugs’ prison.