Thug: The True Story Of India's Murderous Cult (49 page)

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.

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 Rae, 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 fos. 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.