by Mike Dash
… 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.
2 ‘An Independent Race of Men’
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 conce
rning 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.
3 ‘Awful Secrets’
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.
