 Depiction of thugs about to strangle a traveller,c. 1837 | |
| Date | Possibly 17th or 18th centuries – 1840s[1][2][3] |
|---|---|
| Location | Indian subcontinent, mainlycentral India[4] |
| Cause | Socioeconomic factors, disputed religious origins |
| Motive | Robbery, allegedhuman sacrifice |
| Target | Travellers |
| Deaths | ~1,000exhumed[5] Estimated 50,000–100,000 total[6] |
| Convictions | 1,368 (1826–1835)[7] 4,224 (1826–1847)[8] 1,545 (estimated 1826–1835)[9] 6,366 (estimated as of 1840)[9] |
Thuggee (UK:/θʌˈɡiː/thuh-GHEE,US:/ˈθʌɡi/THUH-ghee;Hindustani:ठगी orٿهگی,pronounced[ʈʰə.ɡiː]) was a crime phenomenon in theIndian subcontinent that saw gangs ofthugs (sometimes spelledthags) traverse the region murdering and robbing travellers, often by strangling. However, there is a general consensus among historians against the portrayal popularised by theBritish colonial authorities.
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 areligious fanaticfraternity purported to have ancient origins. Colonial administratorWilliam Henry Sleeman led a policing campaign against thuggee in the 1830s that saw theThuggee Department formally established in 1835 andlegal innovations that facilitated convictions. Thuggee was portrayed as 'hereditary criminality' and provided a precedent for the 1871Criminal Tribes Act.
Contemporary historians generally view the colonial-era portrayal of thuggee, at least to some extent, as a colonial construct, though they offer varying hypotheses as to the actual nature of the phenomenon.[10][11] Historians'reinterpretations differ on the significance of religion to thuggee and the extent to which there was anarchetypal thug. Some scholars reject thehistoricity 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 novelConfessions of a Thug, thuggee became aVictorian sensation. Notable depictions in modern popular fiction include the 1984 filmIndiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.[12][13]
Thug (Hindustani:ठग;ٹھگ) translates to 'swindler' or 'deceiver' and is derived from theSanskrit wordस्थग (sthaga) meaning 'to cover' or 'to conceal'.[14][15][16] The earliest generally accepted usage of the word dates to 1350 and theJanamsakhis evidence that 'thag' came to be used more or less interchangeably with 'robber' in precolonial India.[17][18] The English wordthug is from the same roots.[19] The wordphansigar (फाँसीगार;پھانسی گار) literally meaning 'strangler' was used interchangeably with 'thug' during the 19th century and tended to be the term used in theMadras Presidency.[20]Thuggee refers to the practise of thugs and the crime itself.[21]
During his travels across India in the 7th century, the Chinese monkHsüen Tsang was attacked by pirates on theGanges and narrowly escaped being sacrificed toDurga.[22][23] On another occasion, and while he was journeying toPataliputra, Hsüen Tsang was told while passing a temple that no foreigner who entered it ever came out again.[22] These incidents have been interpreted as early accounts of thuggee.[23][24][25]Kim A. Wagner asserts the view that, by this rationale, every account ofbanditry andhuman sacrifice inancient India could be linked to the thugs of the 19th century.[23] According to a 14th century chronicle byZiauddin Barani,Sultan of DelhiJalal-ud-Din Khalji deported 1,000 arrested 'thags' fromDelhi toBengal sometime between 1290 and 1296, however the chronicle makes no mention of what they were arrested for.[24][17][23] The 15th–16th century poetSurdas wrote illustratively of a 'thag' luring a pilgrim with sweets and wine and then murdering and robbing them.[26]
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 arunning noose and used attractive women to lure travellers.[27][28] In 1672,Mughal emperorAurangzeb issued afarman 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.[29][30][31]John Fryer wrote of his experience in 1675 witnessing the execution of fifteen members of a bandit gang nearSurat that had strangled and robbed passing travellers using a cottonbowstring.[32][33][34] In 1785,James Forbes recounted how an Indian acquaintance had witnessed the arrest of several men that belonged to a tribe he referred to asphanseegars, describing how they would deceive and strangle travellers.[35] A November 1797 tax list prepared forMaharajaDaulat Rao Sindhia covering 20 villages across theparganas of Parihara andSursae lists 318 houses as belonging to thugs, who were subjected to a soldier tax.[36][37]
The British colonial authorities first encountered what they would come to refer to as thuggee inSouthern India in 1807 and inNorthern India in 1809.[38] In April 1809, ten bodies were discovered in a well in theEtawah district (newly ceded in 1801), with theMagistrate of Etawah James Law tasked with investigating the killings.[39] 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 neighbouringAligarh andFarrukhabad districts were assigned to the matter.[40] 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.[41]
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 ofthe 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."[42] 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, localzamindars reported that the perpetrators were "Thugs".[43] 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 theMadras andBengalpresidencies.[44]
Law's replacement, Thomas Perry, offered a large reward of Rs 1,000 for information leading to the arrest of the perpetrators.[45][46] 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.[47][46] 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.[48][49] However, he repeatedly changed his testimony regarding the extent of his own involvement and ultimately had his evidence rejected for repeatedperjury, whereafter Perry was admonished by the Company'ssupreme court (theNizamat Adalat) and forced to release the suspects.[50][51]
Regulation VI of 1810 first referred to Thugs as a distinct criminal category, alongsideDacoits, Cozauks, and Buddecks.[52] Though many individuals were convicted and sentenced to death by thecircuit courts in the early attempts to combat thuggee, all the cases were ultimately dismissed by the superior courts owing to strict evidentiary requirements.[53] In October 1812, Nathaniel John Halhed[a] was tasked with leading an expedition to introduce British law and order and to set up athana in Sindouse (located in thepargana of Parihara, southernmost Etawah), where thugs were retained byRajputzamindars as local mercenaries.[56][57] The operation caused the thugs to disperse into neighbouringMaratha territory, though led to the death of a British officer for which the village of Murnae was razed the following month.[58][57] 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.[59][60] 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.[61]
The first Thugs were convicted inSagar in 1826, whereby two were sentenced to be hanged and a further 29 sentenced totransportation for life.[62][63] This was possible due toSagar and Narbada being established in 1818 as 'Non-Regulation Territories', meaning that theAgent at Sagar could operate outside the usual Company regulations with virtually unlimited powers.[62] In 1829 in theBombay 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.[64] Later that year, the Agent atMahidpur Captain William Borthwick arrested 74 Thugs for the murder of five travellers.[65][66][67] 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 Thugstreated in the same vein as pirates.[68][66] Forty of the Thugs were hanged, 20 sentenced to transportation for life, and a further 12 received limited sentences.[69]
CaptainWilliam Henry Sleeman, as assistant to the Agent atJabalpur, began assigning approvers (the period term forinformants)[71] 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.[69] 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.[72] In October, Sleeman contributed an anonymous letter to theCalcutta Literary Gazette entitled'Thugs' that recounted the execution of 11 Thugs and asserted that thugs were fanatical worshippers of theDevi, includingKali.[73][74][75] The letter also asserted that the thugs were headquartered at theVindhyachal Temple inMirzapur, where their expeditions were planned by the temple priests.[76] 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".[76][77]
The letter made an impression on the Government, with the Chief Secretary to theGovernor-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 ofsati.[78][57] 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.[78] Agent of theSagar 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.[79] 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.[80] Governor-GeneralLord William Bentinck declined to establish a specific office for thuggee, though he provided Sleeman with 50barkandazes (mercenaries) to pursue and apprehend the gangs.[80]
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.[81] In November 1830, Sleeman captured the thuggee leaderFeringheea after holding his relatives captive, whereafter he became Sleeman's most valuable approver.[81][82] In 1832 and 1833, respectively, officials were despatched to the Doab andRajputana to oversee anti-thuggee operations there.[83] Thugs were convicted based oncircumstantial evidence and approver testimony, across 1832 and 1833, 145 Thugs were hanged, 323 sentenced to deportation, and 41 given life in prison by the Sagar and Narbada courts.[81][9] Sleeman successfully played different thuggee factions off of one another to secure approver testimony, exploiting the varying loyalties between different families andcastes within the gangs, for example betweenHindu andMuslim thugs.[81]
In 1834, Smith began to call for a central agency for the suppression of thuggee that would station officials in more territories.[83] Backed by an official report, the Government established theThuggee Department in January 1835 and appointed Sleeman 'General Superintendent of the operations for the suppression of Thuggee' in March.[83] In 1836, river-thugs operating on the Ganges were discovered inBihar,Orissa, andBengal, whose methods of throwing their victims overboard meant that there was very little circumstantial evidence with which to convict them.[84] 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.[84][85] The term 'Thug' was not defined and it thereafter became a legal umbrella-term for a range of crimes such as poisoning (datura-thugs), while the original thuggee gangs that could be traced back to Sindouse had practically ceased to exist by this point.[86]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.[87][88] 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.[9] Betweenc. 1826 and 1841, thuggee trials had aconviction rate of 98.9%.[89]
In 1839,Philip Meadows Taylor published thehistorical fiction novelConfessions of a Thug, which derived much of its material from Sleeman's writings.[91] Thuggee thereafter became aVictorian sensation, withQueen Victoria herself requesting the pre-publicationproofs of Taylor's book, witnessing the birth of a literary tradition.[92][21][93] Among those to write about thuggee wereEugène Sue in his 1844 bookLe Juif errant andMark Twain in his 1897 bookFollowing the Equator.[90]
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.[94] The Thuggee and Dacoity Department remained in existence until 1904, when it was replaced by theCentral Criminal Intelligence Department.[95] The campaign marked one of the first times that thestudy of criminality was recognised and co-opted into colonial rule.[96] The legal model of thuggee constructed by Sleeman set a precedent that culminated in the 1871Criminal Tribes Act (CTA).[97][98][99] Though the CTA was repealed in 1949,tribes considered criminal still exist in India today.[100]
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.[101] Historians such asStewart N. Gordon,Christopher Bayly, Martine van Woerkens,Kim A. Wagner, andMike Dash have sought to engage with the sources torevise Sleeman's colonial-era representation and reconstruct thuggee.[102] While historian Tom Lloyd doesn't reject this approach, he criticises the assumption that the sources present a truth waiting to be uncovered and asserts the view that the sources can only be used to study its representations.[103] Some historians hold thuggee to be a myth invented by the colonial regime to extend its control over the itinerant population or to expand its legal jurisdiction.[101] In apportioning no historical value to the so-called 'thuggee archive', some scholars hold thuggee as described inWestern accounts to be largely imaginary.[104] Literary scholar 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.[105]
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.[106]Alexander Lyon Macfie concludes that, though the thuggee archive should be seen in part as anOrientalist construction, it is broadly accurate in its presentation of most of the facts.[107] To evidence that the sources point to some sort of social reality, Wagner and Dash cite consistencies across the first reports of thuggee that they judge to have been made without knowledge of the others.[108][5] Van Woerkens holds the thugs' recordedargot ofRamasee to place them in a "concrete reality".[109] Dash further points to British efforts to keep their approvers isolated from one another and the bodies that were exhumed.[5] Wagner visited Sindouse (modern day Sindaus,Uttar Pradesh) in 2001 and found that the presence of thugs and the 1812 attack were remembered in local tradition.[110]
According to Wagner and a theory first posited byhistorian Hiralal Gupta in 1959, the proliferation of thuggee came about due to the expansion ofBritish rule that constrained the previously dynamic military labour market andEast India Company policy that led to the disbandment of native standing armies in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.[111] 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.[112] Wagner asserts the view that the thugs were "no more than a species of robber... best understood in the context ofbanditry rather than some vague notion of areligious sect orcaste-like entity".[113] 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.[114] Wagner concludes that thuggee was a longstanding phenomenon predating British colonial rule and that there was not a single representative thugarchetype.[115]
Martine van Woerkens, who authored the first scholarlymonograph on thuggee in 2002,[116] 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.[117] Van Woerkens suggests that the thugs may have been made up ofBanjaras,Pindaris, andNagas whose livelihoods were disrupted by the British conquest.[118] 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".[30] Dash describes the distinguishing feature of thugs as being that they invariably murdered their victims before robbing them.[5]
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.[119] 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.[120] According to Wagner, some officials "clearly" exploited the Government's concern over thuggee to assume more authority, with Sleeman'sopportunism merely part of a wider trend that he refined.[61] The thuggee campaign also saw the British authorities assert their right to 'paramount authority' in India in territories belonging to independent rulers.[121][122] 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.[123]
Thuggee gangs embarked on seasonal expeditions for months at a time, typically leaving inKartika after the autumn harvest and returning aroundAsharh at the start of themonsoon season.[125] Among the main victims of thuggee weresepoys, soldiers of native rulers, andHindu andMuslim pilgrims.[126] The thugs would ingratiate themselves among parties of travellers based on mutual protection, adopting a range of disguises as soldiers in search of work, merchants,mendicants, wealthy people,Brahmins, sepoys,pundits, or travellers.[127] Though thugs would sometimes murder for modest sums, they preferred wealthy victims and surveilled travellers to ascertain their wealth.[128][129]
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.[130][131] 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.[128][131] They sometimes administereddatura seeds to their victims to incapacitate them before killing them.[132][133] Thugs would quite often also murder their victims with swords, knives, or poison, whereafter their bodies would be thrown into a well or anullah, or buried in a hole dug with pickaxes.[134][135]
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 arumāl, scarf,dhoti, wrap, cord, or even a knife and sword were likely to be found on innocent travellers.[137][138] It was also a recorded practice among thugs to stab their victims in the face to prevent them from being recognised.[139][140][141] 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.[114] The 1836 Thuggee Act was later used to prosecutechild trafficking and robbers who non-lethally poisoned their victims.[142][86][143] 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'child-stealing'.[142]
The significance of religion to thuggee is a matter of debate among historians, epitomised byJorge Luis Borges in 1923 when, after readingConfessions of a Thug, he posed the question: "Were the Thugs brigands who sanctified their profession with the cult of the goddessBhowani, or was it the cult of the Goddess Bhowani that turned them into brigands?"[144] The thugs worshipped different manifestations of theDevi, of which Bhavani was most often referred to, alongsideKali and others, in what composed a variety of traditions.[145][146] They believed their actions to be sanctioned by the Devi.[115][147][148] The thugs also held a myth of divine origins based on a story from theDevi Mahatmya in which Kali fought with the demonRaktabīja, aided by a group of goddesses calledMatrikas— in the thugs' version, they took the place of the Matrikas and Kali defeated the final demons with strangulation.[149][150] It remains unclear whether the myth held Kali to have created theprogenitors of thugs, as Sleeman claimed.[149][150] Though the British were fascinated by the fact that Muslims worshippedHindu deities,religious syncretism in India was common.[151][152] According toCynthia Ann Humes, Thug testimony only rarely referred to Bhavani, mostly in response to Sleeman's leading questions, and theIslamic concept of fate was invoked most often.[153] Some Muslim approvers identified Bhavani withFatima and therein maintained their belief inmonotheism, while others worshipped Bhavani but disowned her uponturning King's evidence.[151][154]
Depositions of thugs conducted in the 1830s contain accounts of rituals and ceremonies that they partook in during their expeditions.[155] In the interviews, Sleeman's colleague Captain James Paton specifically honed in on the thugs' religious orientations, askingloaded questions based onChristian thought.[156] When conducting the interviews, Sleeman and Paton were predominantly interested in the goddess-worship of the thugs, their observance of rules andomens, and the variance between different gangs' customs.[157] Wagner holds their "extreme interest" in matters of religion to "very likely" have influenced the manner in which the approvers discussed their ownidentities.[157] Thugs ateconsecratedgoor in honour of the Devi and made offerings to her before their expeditions.[158][159][160] They strongly adhered to omens, with a bad omen such as an owl chirping at the wrong time being enough to abort a murder.[161][162][163] Thugs' rules forbade them from murdering women or members of certain lower castes.[149][164][165]
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Dr. Richard C. Sherwood, who authored the first scholarly exposition on thuggee out of theMadras Presidency in 1816, was the first to mention religion in connection with the phenomenon.[167][168][169] Sherwood described the phansigars as highly superstitious, who, though some of them were Muslim, held Kali as theirtutelary deity.[170] 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".[171] 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 inhuman sacrifice.[172][173]
According to Wagner and historian Radhika Singha, the religious beliefs and practices of those who practised thuggee were common in the wider population.[174][175] Wagner states that "Robbers, who did not worship a tutelary deity, performpujas or entertain certain beliefs concerning themoral sanction of their acts would have been truly exceptional in anIndian context".[176] 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".[175] Dash similarly surmises that the motives behind thuggee weren't religious in nature, concluding that the thugs' beliefs were closer tofolklore than a distinct faith.[177] Wagner notes that ordinarydacoits, who were never assumed to have religious motivations, also held a puja before and after robberies.[145] According to Wagner, the thugs' invocation of Bhavani before their execution was in fact thewar cry ofMarathas andRajputs.[145] 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.[176][178]
In contrast to this, van Woerkens places the thugs in aTantric tradition based on Halbfass's work linking them to theSamsaramochaka, religious killers briefly mentioned byKumārila Bhaṭṭa that believedhimsa (antithetical toahimsa) to be a meritorious act, andYoginis in theNetratantra that sacrifice human beings to unite their victims withShiva.[180]
Based on interviews in which Thugs were asked how it was that they were about to be hanged if they weredivinely protected, van Woerkens concludes that the thugs had once been trueshaktas but had since neglected their rituals and the rules of their vocation.[181] According to Dash, thugs who killed indiscriminately were harshly denounced by thugs from other districts.[182] Van Woerkens posits that the thugs' internal belief system had collapsed due to an "unbounded lust for loot" that caused their quest forsalvation to devolve from ritually controlled violent actions to mass crimes for which the goods they stole no longer constituteddivine payments in return for the sacrificial victims.[183] She concludes that the thugs didn't constitute asect since they lacked aparampara.[184]
According to thedaroga of Sindouse in 1810, the locals supported themselves by cultivating the land for eight months of the year and for the remainder byhorse trading or committing thuggee.[185] Apatwari 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.[185] He also stated that the localzamindars took care of their families while they were gone and earned interest on loans given to the thugs.[185] According to Wagner, the thugs were also commonly and interchangeably referred to by themselves and others assepoys (meaning 'soldier' or 'retainer').[186] The thugs borrowed military terminology in their use ofjemadar to mean gang leader andsubedar for when several bands joined together.[129][187][188] 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.[113] 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.[113]
Thugs commonly spared the children of their victims, and a large number of them were consequently adopted.[189][190][191] Girls were married off to the sons or relatives of their adoptee, thus avoiding the costs of adowry, while boys tended to go to childless parents in the context of highinfant mortality rates.[189][192][191] Thugs didn't always spare children, and, according to Wagner, only well-off thugs with a secure home base tended to adopt them.[189][193]
The thugs used a criminalargot calledRamasee, which was compiled by Sleeman from interviews with more than a dozen Thugs in his 1836 seminal work on thuggeeRamaseeana.[195][74] 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.[195] 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.[196][197]
Thugs used the argot to communicate in front of their victims, to identify other thugs, and to define identity and status.[198][199][200] The argot involved giving secondary meanings to established words and phrases so as not to arouse suspicion, such as usingTumbakoolao ('bring tobacco') to give the signal for the murders to take place.[201][131][202] Similar argots were used by many different groups in 19th-century India, with Wagner surmising that Ramasee wasn't exclusive to thugs.[203][131] 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, andpeddlers.[204][205]
During the 1830s, British officials propagated a representation of thuggee and thugs as irredeemable "hereditary criminality"[206][207][85] 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.[170] According to an 1834 report by the Thugee Department officer in RajputanaDonald Friell McLeod, the thugs believed that they all originated from a group 15 generations prior that settled around Delhi under the protection of theMughal emperor.[208] At this point, they didn't commit any crimes but were forced to flee after murdering one of their associates, giving rise to sevennomadic Muslim clans.[209] Starting from the 1797 tax list, Sleeman made detailedgenealogies of thugs that he published inRamseeana, though they tended not to stretch further back than three generations and included the names of adopted children.[36][210] The colonial-era portrayal saw thuggee as an "ancient practice", with Sleeman arguing that theSagartii of the 5th century BCE were ancestors of the stranglers described by Thévenot.[211][212][213]
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.[214] Wagner asserts that thuggee was not a uniform phenomenon and that neither were the individuals who practised it.[215] 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.[216] Singha attributes the subsequent conception of whole communities as 'criminal' to a wider process of colonialpacification.[217]
British officials recorded extensive lists of subgroupings, and the colonial-era material on thuggee alludes to some 40 different 'classes' of Thugs.[218] Notable groups include:
Thugs were motivated tobecome approvers to avoid the death penalty, whereby they confessed to specific crimes and, after they were conditionally pardoned, provideddepositions.[220][237][238] Around 100 Thugs were accepted as approvers by Sleeman and his colleagues and approver testimony and interviews served as the British authorities' main source of information on the phenomenon.[239][220] Wagner notes that, for the initial confession to be believed and accepted, the thugs had to comply with any preconceived notions that the interrogator had about the case in question.[220] Feringheea was returned to jail in 1832, though other approvers remained on the roads with theirnujeeb escorts (militiamen used by the Thuggee Department as pseudo-police detectives), hunting thuggee gangs they had personal knowledge of.[240][241] They were temporarily freer as long as they remained useful and Dash suggests that at least a few of them might have levelled false accusations against innocent men to prolong this arrangement.[240]
By the late 1830s, 56 approvers had been returned toJubbulpore Central Jail, where they were kept in a lockup outside the prison gates away from the other inmates.[240] Though the authorities believed that the approvers couldn't be reformed, the Jubbulpore School of Industry was established in 1837 as amanufactory where they and their families learnt trades.[240][243][86] The approvers were kept in a smallwalled village, separate from their families who were held under strict surveillance in a village adjacent to the manufactory.[244] 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.[245] Sons of the approvers were often employed with their fathers, while women assisted inspinning textiles.[246] The School of Industry's first products were bricks, and it was able to become self-sustaining, selling into theCentral Provinces markets where the cost of importing from elsewhere was prohibitive.[247]
They were later taught to make tents and carpets, and by 1847 produced 130 tents and 3,300 yards of carpet yearly.[248][249] A carpet made by the Thugs was exhibited at theGreat Exhibition in 1851 and they later made a 40 by 80 feet (12 m × 24 m) carpet for Queen Victoria that, as of 2005, remained on display in theWaterloo Chamber atWindsor Castle.[248] Items made by the Thugs were also exhibited at the1862 International Exhibition in London and the1867Exposition Universelle inParis.[250]
As of 1870, the institution housed 158 Thugs (mostly arrested in the 1840s and 1850s), 202 Dacoits, and over 1,500 wives and children.[247] The productivity of the School declined heavily as the Thugs aged, and by 1888, it was no longer making a profit.[251] 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.[252] By the start of the 20th century, the School of Industry had effectively ceased to exist and became a reformatory school forjuvenile offenders.[253]
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