Thug: The True Story Of India's Murderous Cult (48 page)

Etymology of the word ‘thug’
See John Gilchrist’s
A Dictionary, English & Hindoostanee
… I, 486, 710, 973, where the word ‘T’heg’ is synonymous with ‘knave’, ‘rascal’ and ‘villain’, and Robert Drummond’s dictionary,
Illustrations of Grammatical Parts of the Guzerattee, Mahratta and English Languages
, which defines the word ‘thug’ to mean ‘a cheat, a swindler’. The Sufi poet Bulleh Shah (1680–1757) wrote a verse in which ‘thugs’ feature as swindlers, while the early nineteenth-century police officer John Shakespear reported from the Western Provinces that ‘the literal meaning is “rogue” or “knave”’. (‘Observations regarding Badheks and T’hegs, extracted from an official report dated 30 April 1816’,
Asiatick Researches
13 (1820) p. 287.) Given these discrepancies, it is worth noting that Iftikhar Ahmad, in his
Thugs, Dacoits and the Modern World-System in Nineteenth-Century India
pp. 128–9, cites an April 1820 despatch from Magistrate Lycester, at Roy Barelly, which revealingly reports that in the Western Provinces ‘the word Thug is a local cant term and consequently little understood in any uniform way’.
   Thus, while there are scattered references to ‘thugs’ in histories and chronicles dating as far back as the thirteenth century, and perhaps earlier –Wilhelm Halbfass, in
Tradition and Reflections
pp. 102–7, points to mentions of ‘the sacred texts of the Thags’ in Sanskrit works composed as early as the tenth century AD – it cannot be assumed that these accounts refer to the same murderous stranglers who used the name in later times. There are hints, here and there, that a handful of them might; Guru Nanak (1469–1539), the founder of the Sikh religion, once encountered ‘a certain Sheikh Sajjan’, who had built both a Hindu temple and a mosque in order to ‘lure travellers into his house in order that he might murder them and so acquire their wealth’, and who disposed of his victims by hurling their bodies down a well. But a history of the Delhi sultan Firoz Shah II, dating to 1350, which contains the oldest generally accepted use of the word, makes no mention of the crimes of which its ‘thugs’ were accused, noting simply that no fewer than 1,000 of these criminals were betrayed to the authorities by one of their own number, and that at some point between 1290 and 1296 the entire group was rounded up and deported down the Jumna to Bengal. On Guru Nanak, see WH MacLeod,
Guru Nanak and the Sikh Religion
pp. 38–9; 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. 236. On Firoz Shah II, see HM Elliot,
History of India As Told By Its Own Historians
III, 141.

Counterfeiters
Satya Sangar,
Crime and Punishment in Mughal India
pp. 85–6; Radhika Singha,
A Despotism of Law
p. 189.

Virtually all the Thugs
The historian Stewart Gordon examined 2,000 fragments of oral
tradition
from central India, ‘both in the vernacular and in translation’, and found ‘many stories about robbers, but none specifically about Thugs’. Gordon, ‘Scarf and sword: Thugs, marauders and state-formation in 18th-century India’,
IESHR
4 (1969) pp. 408–9. For an example of a story about ‘Thugs’ who appear to have been common highway robbers, see V. Smith, ‘The prince and the Thugs’,
North Indian Notes & Queries
(March 1894) p. 212.

Identified himself as a Thug
According to Hossyn’s own statement, the word was actually put into his mouth by his interrogator, Amarun Zoollee Beg of Shekoabad. ‘Translation of the examination of Gholam Hossyn, inhabitant of Khurah, Pergunnah Shekoabad, by trade a munerar, aged 16 or thereabouts’, enclosed in Perry to Dowdeswell, 26 Mar. 1810, Perry papers Add.Mss. 5375, fos. 110–14, CUL. It took some time for the term to become
established
British usage. Christopher Bayly, in
Empire and Information
p. 175, notes that ‘in his letters of this period Perry alternates between small and capital “t” for the word and
sometimes
puts it in quotation marks’.

Perry’s interrogation of Gholam Hossyn
Court of circuit, Bareilly, Zillah Etawah, Second Sessions of 1810, in Consultation No. 43 and Consultation No. 46 of 18 Jan. 1811, BCJC P/130/27.

…
Gholam Hossyn’s Thugs
… ‘Translation of the examination of Gholam Hossyn’, Add.Mss. 5375, fos. 110–14, and ‘Translation of the acknowledgement of Ghoolam Hossyn Thug made before me on the 11th April 1810’ in ibid. fos. 117–22.

More than suspected
Perry to Dowdeswell, 11 Apr. 1810, ibid. fos. 115–17.

Datura poisoning
Thorn apple, also known as jimson weed and mad apple, is believed to be responsible for more poisonings than any other plant. The toxin it contains – hyoscyamine – is present in its leaves, roots, flowers and seeds; the Thugs seem to have used ground seeds, but herbal teas brewed from the leaves can also kill.

Dullal and others
‘Deposition of Dullal, sheekh, aged 60’; ‘Deposition of Kalee Khan’; ‘Deposition of Acbar, son of Himmut Khan’, n.d., Add.Mss. 5375 fos. 125–31, 134–5.

Cloth strips
Consultation No. 46 of 1811, BCJC P/130/27.

‘
takes a handkerchief
…’ Ibid.

‘
atrocious crimes
’ Perry to Dowdeswell, 17 May 1810, ibid. fos. 136–8.

Size of Thug gangs relative to victims
Thornton,
Illustrations
p. 181, p. 243;
Sel.Rec
. 63, 78–9. This analysis is borne out by the author’s tabulation of all the cases mentioned in Thornton,
Illustrations
, Sleeman,
Ramaseeana
and
Sel.Rec
.

…
never killed close to home
… As well as making it harder for the police to catch the Thugs, this practice made it possible for the gangs to secure support from villagers and local
landholders
who could well have caused trouble had their friends or relatives been despatched. Some of the members of the Nursingpore gang described by Sleeman in
Ramaseeana
I, 30–3, do appear to have killed passing travellers in the grove outside their home village of Kundelee; they were shielded by the local landholders. On the other hand, the Murnae Thugs, tempted to strangle four merchants, who came to their village to purchase loot, for the sake of the 700 rupees they carried, were heavily fined by their protector the Rajah of Rampoora, who had to deal with the missing men’s anxious relatives. He said ‘that now we had begun to murder at home as well as abroad, we were no longer deserving of favour’. Ibid. I, 226.

‘
In this part of the country
…’ ‘Deposition of Kalee Khan’, Perry papers Add.Mss. 5375 fos. 125–9.

Avoid Company territories
Stockwell to Perry, 11 Aug. 1815, in
Ramaseeana
II, 372.

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

sipahee and cakari
Nathaniel Halhed, ‘Report on the state of the Pergunnahs of Sindouse from actual observation’, 18 Oct. 1812, BC F/4/389 (9872) fos. 75–89; Kenna, op. cit. p. 214.

‘
Had this inhuman offender
…’ Perry to Dowdeswell, 17 May 1810, Add.Mss. 5375 fos. 136–8.

‘
There are many thieves
…’ Statement of Jheodeen, 1836, in ‘Collections on Thuggee and Dacoitee’, Paton papers Add.Mss. 41300 fo. 25, BL.

…
a British traveller
… Charles Davidson,
Diary of Travels and Adventures in Upper India
I, 186–7.

‘
low and dirty
’ Statement of Jheodeen, Paton papers, fo. 25, BL.

‘
men of force and violence
…’ Statement of Futteh [Futty] Khan, 1836, ibid. fo. 19v.

‘
The Thug is the king of all these classes!
’ Statements of Buhram, 1836, ibid. fos. 19v, 24.

…
at least a hundred years
… These traditions were first transcribed in the 1830s. The Thugs, an approver named Thukoree related, ‘came to Himmutpore … and took up their abode under the protection of the Sengur Raja Juggummun Sa …’ Sleeman notes that the ruler of Himmutpore in 1835 was the great-great-great-grandson of Juggummun Sa – the intervening generations giving a probable date of 1650–1720 for the arrival of the Thugs in Juggummun’s dominion. Juggummun himself was said to have taxed the Thugs so heavily that they fled to the Chambel valley to escape these exactions. See ‘Conversations with Thugs’, in
Ramaseeana
I, 222–4.

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.