Thug: The True Story Of India's Murderous Cult (47 page)

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 Sessions 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.

…
nine-tenths of India
… The Mughals’ sway was exceeded only by that of the British (and then only if one assumes that the nominally independent princedoms that continued to make up half of the Subcontinent really formed part of the Raj) and is unlikely – while Pakistan and Bangladesh exist – ever to be approached again. Keay,
India
pp. xxii–xxiii. Nevertheless, a good deal of this magnificence was illusory. ‘Outwardly, Mughal rule was a huge system of household government reinforced by an overwhelming but unwieldy
military
power,’ writes Bayly in
Rulers
p. 10. ‘[But] one can easily overestimate its control, especially in outlying areas. The empire was … more like a grid of imperial towns, roads and markets which pressed heavily on [existing Indian] society and modified it, though only at certain points.’

Etawah in ruins
William Foster,
Early Travels in India
,
1583–1619
p. 179.

Mughal revenues
James,
Raj
p. 5.

Abandoned checkpoints
Radhika Singha,
A Despotism of Law
p. 17n.

Etawah changed hands
Between 1700 and 1800 Etawah was subject to the Moghul Emperor at Delhi (1700–14), to Muhammed Khan Bangash and his dynasty of Afghans (1714–49), to Nawal Rai of Oudh (1749–50), Ahmad Khan Bangash (1750–51), to the Maratha and Jat warlords of central India (1751–7), Mahmud Khan Bangash (1757), the Marathas again (1757–61), and then to the Rohillas of northern India (1762–70). Thereafter the city passed under Maratha control one final time (1770–73), before falling to Shuja-ud-Daula, the ruler of Oudh, in the last days of 1773.

The British in India Keay, Honourable Company
pp. 73–80, 85–9, 143–68, 271–327, 362–91; idem,
India
pp. 370–72; Suresh Ghosh,
The Social Condition of the British Community in Bengal
,
1757–1800
pp. 1–12, 68–9; Bernard Cohn, ‘Recruitment and training of British civil servants in India, 1600–1860’, in Ralph Braibanti (ed.),
Asian Bureaucratic Systems Emergent from the British Imperial Tradition
pp. 87–95.

Clive and the 200 Days
Keay,
India
pp. 381–4, 392–3.

Transformation of the East India Company
Ibid. pp. 392–3; Edwardes,
The Sahibs and the Lotus
pp. 13, 34–57; idem,
Glorious Sahibs
pp. 34–5; George Bearce,
British Attitudes Towards India
,
1784–1858
pp. 11–39; Michael Fisher,
Indirect Rule in India
pp. 8, 11, 31, 43, 49–51.

‘
had barely touched
…’ Keay, op. cit. pp. 399–400. See also William Dalrymple,
White Mughals
pp. 57–60, and Iris Butler,
The Eldest Brother
, for more detailed appraisals of this difficult man’s character.

The Marathas
Stewart Gordon,
The Marathas, 1600–1818
pp. 178–93; Edwardes,
Glorious Sahibs
pp. 22–31, 39–43. The senior Maratha leaders owed allegiance of a sort to a potentate known as the Peshwa of Poona. But the Peshwa was far from the strongest of this group of princes, and lacked the authority to prevent his compatriots from making war on each other as well as fighting rival Mughal successor states. By the end of the eighteenth century he (and two other splendidly named Maratha potentates, the Gaikwad of Baroda and the Bhonsle of Nagpore) had been overshadowed by Sindhia and Holkar. Maratha titles, incidentally, worked in much the same way as those of Scottish clan chiefs. ‘Sindhia’ and ‘Holkar’ were family names used in the same way that a
Highlander
might speak of his chief as ‘The Cameron of Locheil’. CE Luard,
Gwalior State
Gazetteer
p. 15.

Famine
Severe famines struck India with depressing regularity. See, e.g., Keay,
Honourable
Company
pp. 115–16; WW Hunter,
The Annals of Rural Bengal
pp. 19–33; GL Corbett and RV Russell,
Central Provinces District Gazetteers: Hoshangabad District
p. 32.

Perry
See
East India Register
; East India biographies, OIOC.

The beginning of British rule of Etawah
DL Drake–Brockman,
District Gazetteers of the United Provinces, Etawah
pp. 95–8.

‘
During the short period
…’ Perry to Dowdeswell, 26 Nov. 1808, Add.Mss. 5375 fo. 4.

Etawah and surroundings
Walter Hamilton,
The East-India Gazetteer
I, 544–5; Edward Thornton,
A Gazetteer of the Territories Under the Government of the East-India Company
II, 236–42; HR Nevill,
District Gazetteers of the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh
:
Agra
II, 241–2; Thomas Bacon,
First Impressions and Studies from Nature in Hindustan
II, 388–91; Christopher Bayly,
Empire and Information: Intelligence Gathering and Social Communication in India 1780–1870
pp. 174–5.

‘
desperate and lawless
’ DL Drake–Brockman,
District Gazetteers of the United Provinces, Etawah
p. 71.

‘
a bold, spirited and independent race
…’ Perry to Dowdeswell (Secretary, Judicial Department, Calcutta), 9 Dec. 1808, Perry papers Add.Mss. 5375 fos. 6–12, CUL; Bayly,
Empire and Information
pp. 174–5.

‘
very turbulent
…’ Perry to Halhed (assistant magistrate, Etawah), 27 Oct. 1812, BC F/4/389 (9872) fos. 57–8 OIOC.

‘
hardly conquered
’ Halhed to Dowdeswell, 18 Oct. 1812, ibid. fo. 63.

Traditions of banditry
See, for example, the discussion of the career of Papadu, the Hindu Robin Hood, in JF Richards and VN Rao, ‘Banditry in Mughal India: Historical and Folk Perception’,
IESHR
17 (1980) pp. 99–120; also David Shulman, ‘On South Indian Bandits and Kings’, ibid. pp. 291n, 304–5.

Early travellers in India
For Hsuan Tsang, see Samuel Beal,
The Life of Hiuen-Tsiang
pp. 86–7. For Hawkins and Withington, see William Foster,
Early Travels in India, 1583–1619
pp. 60–122, 188–234. For the destruction of the Mughal caravan, see Bayly,
Empire and Information
p. 20.

Dacoits
For the dacoits’ general modus operandi, see Basudeb Chattopadhyay,
Crime and Control in Early Colonial Bengal, 1770–1860
pp. 21–2 and Iftikhar Ahmad,
Thugs, Dacoits and the Modern World-System in Nineteenth-Century India
pp. 82–3. For lathials, see Chattopadhyay pp. 39, 79, 105–8. For the identity of dacoits and for torture, see John McLane, ‘Bengali bandits, police and landlords after the permanent settlement’ in Anand Yang (ed.),
Crime and Criminality in British India
pp. 31–3. On dacoity generally, see also Ranjan Chakrabarti,
Authority and Violence in Colonial Bengal, 1800–1860
pp. 73, 79, 86, 133, 144, 186–7.

‘
with incredible rapidity
’ James Hutton,
A Popular Account of the Thugs and Dacoits
p. 101. For the Lucknow theft, see ibid. p. 107.

‘
like quicksilver
…’ William Sleeman, cited by James Sleeman,
Thug
p. 81.

‘
in colonies
…’ Ibid.

‘
we would undoubtedly
…’ This quote, from a dacoit apprehended in the Agra district around 1855, is cited by Ahmad, op. cit. p. 103.

Unlikely to be caught
Chattopadhyay, op. cit. p. 137, cites statistics for the Lower Provinces of Bengal for the year 1828, concerning ‘all the robberies, burglaries and theft in which the value of the property robbed or stolen exceeded 50 rupees’.

‘
A crime committed
…’ Cited by Ahmad, op. cit. p. 82.

Rising crime
Figures from the district court in Moorshidabad, Bengal, show that reported crime there rose by nearly 180% between 1790–93 and 1799; BB Misra,
The Central Administration of the East India Company
,
1773–1834
p. 335. Chattopadhyay, op. cit. p. 127, and Chakrabarti, op. cit. pp. 135–6, discuss the incidence of dacoity.

Instances of dacoity in Etawah
Perry to Dowdeswell, 14 June 1811, Add.Mss. 5376 fos. 11–12.

Indian roads in the Mughal period
RC Majumdar (ed.),
The History and Culture of the Indian People
VII, 87; William Sleeman,
Ramaseeana
I, iv; Stewart Gordon,
Marathas, Marauders and State Formation in Eighteenth-Century India
p. 27; Asiya Siddiqi (ed.),
Trade and Finance in Colonial India
,
1750–1860
pp. 142–3; Emily Eden,
Up the Country
p. 79; Henry Spry,
Modern India
I, 50–1, 110; Bayly,
Rulers, Townsmen and Bazaars
pp. 142–62.

Hucarras
Bayly,
Empire and Information
pp. 64–5.

Modes of transport
Thomas Bacon,
First Impressions and Studies from Nature in Hindustan
II, 65; Michael Edwardes,
The Sahibs and the Lotus
pp. 103, 105–6; J Dunbar (ed.),
Tigers, Durbars and Kings
p. 70; Pran Neville,
Rare Glimpses of the Raj
pp. 143–7. Palanquins were provided with mattresses and cushions, and most travellers stocked them with supplies of food and drink, a lantern, pistols and a book or two. There was lively disagreement concerning their merits. Some British officers found them surprisingly comfortable; others, including Thomas Bacon, finding that the jogtrot of the bearers resulted in ‘abominable shaking’, condemned them as a ‘demi-barbarous method of locomotion’. The bearers were both highly skilled and militant (there was a general strike of palanquin bearers in Calcutta in 1828), and more than one high-ranking but overzealous British officer found himself abandoned by the roadside by bearers whom he had, most unwisely, abused for the discomforts of his journey. The cost of cross-country palanquin travel compared very unfavourably with the 20 rupees or so a month needed to run a private palanquin within the confines of a city, and was occasioned by the need for more bearers – generally two sets of four rather than the usual one, the teams changing places every eight or 10 minutes on the road; the constant need to engage fresh relays; and the necessity of hiring a foreman, a pair of torch-men to light the way at night, and additional servants to carry such luggage as could not be fitted into the litter.

Scarred by cracks
AC Newcombe,
Village, Town and Jungle Life in India
pp. 327–8.

‘
Such conveniences
…’ Anon., ‘Ramaseeana’,
Foreign Quarterly Review
21 (1838) p. 6.

‘
a blanket or a quilt
…’ Ibid. pp. 6–7. For
suttoo
, see Bacon, op. cit. II, 408; for betel, see James Kerr,
The Domestic Life, Character and Customs of the Natives of India
p. 176.

‘
The traveller
…’ Bacon, op. cit. II, 65.

Fanny Eden
Dunbar, op. cit. p. 121.

Emily Eden
Cited by Dennis Kincaid,
British Social Life in India, 1608–1937
p. 184.

Ordered to cut the cost of his patrols
Perry to Dowdeswell, 9 Dec. 1808, Add.Mss. 5375 fos. 6–12.

‘
Daily experience
…’ Ibid.

Incidence of murder in India
Chattopadhyay, op. cit. p. 92.

Checkpoint and reward
Perry to Dowdeswell, 26 Mar. 1810, Add.Mss. 5375 fos. 105–9.

First arrests
‘Translation of the examination of Gholam Hossyn, inhabitant of Khurah Pergunnah Shekoabad’, enclosed in ibid. fos. 110–14.