¹ Kaye, J. W., The Administration of the East India Company: A History of Indian Progress (London, 1953),p.354.Google Scholar The British, he wrote, had first seen the natives as a people ‘to be trafficked with’ then ‘to be subbued’, then as revenue payers, then as a people to be governed, but only very recently ‘to know’. The study of books had preceded the study of men, though that which was most needed was not set down in books; there had been little knowledge of the ‘corrosive evils’ of Indian society. Ibid.,pp. 355–6. Thornton in his popular account of the thugs considered that it was an index of limited knowledge that the English had not known about thuggee earlier despit an intercourse of 200years. Thornton, E., lllustations of the History and Practices of the Thugs (London, 1837).Google Scholar

² In Anglo-Indian parlance ‘thugs’ were believed to constitute a kind of hereditary criminal fraternity, resting on beliefs and rites which upheld a ‘profession’ of inveigling and strangling travellers.Google Scholar

³ Sleeman often referred to the circumstances favouring the campaign as ‘providential’. Sleeman, W. H., Ramaseeana, or a Vocabulary of the Peculiar Language used by the Thugs, with an Introduction and Appendix, Descriptive of the System Pursued by that Fraternity and of the Measures…Adopted by the Supreme Government of India for its Suppression (Calcutta, 1836), pp. 46.–7 (hereafter Ramaseeana).Google Scholar

⁴ In contrast to the thugs who were represented as murdering by stealth, dacoit ‘tribes’ were understood to make attacks by open violence. The defining line between thuggee, dacoity and highway robbery was never in fact very clear. For the Badhaks, cf. Sleeman, W. H., Report on Budhuk alias Bagree Decoits and Other Gang Robbers by Hereditary Profession (Calcutta, 1849, hereafter Report on Budhuk Decoits).Google Scholar

⁵ The criminal courts of the Bengal Presidency operated on what came to be termed an ‘Anglo-Muhammadan law’: the Courts of Circuit and in the superior court, the Nizamat Adalat, Muslim law officers gave a fatwa, a formal legal opinion, on the guilt ot otherwise of the prisoner under Islamic law. The influence of the fatwa on the actual sentence passed by the British judge had been drastically curtailed by the early nineteenth century but it was still regarded as an essential procedure of the criminal trial.Google Scholar

⁶ The law commissioners who framed the draft penal code of 1837 had criticized laws which allowed for imprecision and variability in the definition of crime and therefore gave too much scope for the exercise of judical discretion. Indian law commissioners to Governor General in Council (hereafter GG in C), 14 October 1837Google Scholar, Parliamentary Papers (hereafter PP), 1837–1838, vol. 41, pp. 466–8.Google Scholar

⁷ Cf.Duncan, Jonathan, Resident Banaras, to GG in C, Bengal Revenue Judicial (hereafter BRJ), 27 February 1792, BRJ P/127/78, 13 April 1792, p. 526, 535, India Office Library (hereafter IOL);Google ScholarMoor, E. reported that in India robbery was, like begging, a hereditary craft, and not one viewed as great moral turpitude, Hindu Infanticide (London, 1811), pp. 153–4;Google ScholarJenkins, Richard, Report on the Territories of the Rajah of Nagpoor (Calcutta, 1827), p. 294;Google ScholarShakespear, J., Acting Superintendent of Police, Western Provinces (hereafter SP, WP) extract from his report, 30 04 1816, ‘Observations Regarding Badheks and Th'egs’, Asiatick Researches XIII (Calcutta, 1820);Google ScholarMalcolm, J., A Memoir of Central India. vol. II (London, 1823), pp. 182–8.Google Scholar

⁸ Committe of Circuit to Council at Fort William, 15 August 1772. The family of a man executed for dacoity were to be made slaves of the state, and the village was to be fined. General Regulations for the Administration of Justice, August 1772. But it is uncertain whether this provision ever came into effective operation. Hanstings to Board, 10 July 1773Google Scholar, in Harington, J. H., An Elementary Analysis of the Laws and Regulations Enacted by the Governor General in Council at Fort William in Bengal for the Civil Government of the British Territories in that Presidency (Calcutta, 1805–1817), vol. I, pp. 300–1.Google Scholar

⁹ Hastings, Warren to Council, 10 July 1773, and extract from proga of the Governor and Council, 19 April 1774Google Scholar, Colebrooke, J. E., Supplement to a Digest of the Regulations and Laws Enacted by the Governor in Council (Calcutta, 1907), pp. 114–19, 122 (hereafter, Supplement).Google Scholar

¹⁰ Sandria B. Freitag argues that arrangements for dealing with collective crime grew up as a ‘covert’ legal structure forming an alternative to the overt legal structure ‘ostensibly geared to individuals’ which provided the reassuring appearance of ‘the rule of law’.Freitag, Sandria B., “Crime in the Social Order of Colonial North India’, Modern Asian Studies 25, 2 (1991), pp. 227–61, 231. In contrast, I argue that both these elements existed in uneasy in relationship with the same body of law, and their coexistence explains certain contradictions within it. Even if ‘extra-ordinary measures’ to deal with ‘criminal communities’ took shape in territory outside the Company's regulations, or within the field of executive discretion, they eventually had to be integrated into the sphere of ‘rule of law’. In this article I attempt to show how the introducction of laws dealing with ill-defined ‘criminal communities’ introduced certain fissures into the ideology of the equal, abstract and universal legal subject.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹¹ Act XXIV of 1843 ‘for the conviction of professional dacoits, who belong to certain tribe, systematically carrying on their lawless pursuits in different parts of the country….’Google Scholar

¹² W. H. Sleeman of the Political Service had warned in general terms of the incresaing magnitude of thuggee, but so had Ochterlony, British resident in Malwa and Rajputana, some eight years earlier. Cf.Sleeman's letter to the Calcutta Literary Gazette, 3 October 1830 in Bruce, G., The Stranglers: The Cult of Thuggee and its Overthrow in British India (London, 1968), pp. 81–3.Google ScholarOchterlony, D. to G. Swinton, Secy, Political Dept, 30 April 1822Google Scholar, in Sinha, N. K. and Dasgupta, A. K. (eds), Selections from Ochterlony Papers (1818–25) in the NAI (University of Calcutta, 1964), p. 244.Google Scholar

¹³ Cf.Sleeman, W. H., Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official (1844; revised, annotated edn, ed. Smith, V. A., 1915; repr. Karachi, 1980), pp. 78–9, n. 4.Google Scholar

¹⁴ F. C. Smith, Agent to the Governor General, Sagar and Narbada Territories (hereafter AGG, SNT), to Macnaghten, W. H., 29 May 1832. Selected records of the Central Provinces Secretariat, 1829–1832. Mss Eur D 1188, IOL, p. 132. AlsoGoogle Scholar, The Good Old Days of John Company, compiled by Carey, W. H. (Calcutta, 1907), pp. 249–50.Google Scholar

¹⁵ Until 1830, the Company maintained a monopoly over the sale of opium from this region. Thereafter it sought to extend its revenues by issuing passes for the transit of opium through Company territory. In a certain sense the operations against various species of plunderes in Central India and Rajputana were intertwined with the Company's efforts to increase its revenues from trade and commerce at the expense of the revenues of local chiefs and rules.Google Scholar

¹⁶ Cf. Extract Bengal Political Consultations, 20 April 1824, no. 43, Board's Consultations (hereafter, BC), F/4/984, 1828–1829, IOL.Google Scholar

¹⁷ Ochterlony, resident in Malwa and Rajputana, had recommended the same measures in 1822 which ere to be implemented in the 1830s. i.e. that the paramount power should set up courts for the trial of robbers and murders, ‘ceasing to enquire to what state the Culprit is a Subject, or in whose dominion the Crime was committed’. The government affirmed that the Company could assume this authority but indicated a reluctance to do so.Google ScholarOchterlony, D. to G. Swinton, Secy, Political Dept, 30 April 1822 and Secy, Pol. Dept to D. Ochterlony, 24 May 1822, Selections from Ochterlony Papers, pp. 244, 249.Google Scholar

¹⁸ See below.Google Scholar

¹⁹ It was during Bentinck's governor-generalship, Lee Warner remarks, that a new conception of political duties was developed ‘which, derived from the law of nature or the requirements of civilisation, affected British relations with every Native state.’ SirLee-Warner, William, The Native States of India (1st edn, 1910, repr., Tulsi Publishing House, New Delhi, 1979), p. 100.Google Scholar

²⁰ ‘… now that we are supreme, my opinion is decidedly in favour of an open avowed and general prohibition, resting entirely upon the moral goodness of the act, and our power to enforce it …’ Minute on sati, 8 November 1829.Google ScholarPhilips, C. H., The Correspondence of Lord William Cavendish Bentinck (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1977), vol. I, p. 337 (hereafter CLWCB).Google Scholar

²¹ Foreign Dept Political Consulations, 12 December 1833, no. 66–7, National Archives of India (hereafter NAI) and despatch from Court of Directors, 16 May 1838, Indian and Bengal despatches, E/4/758, pp. 489–90, IOL.Google Scholar

²² Preamble to Regulation 2, 1834.Google Scholar

²³ The Bentinck government, committed to retrenchment, woulf have discouraged the assumption of major administrative responsibilities in the princely states. For instance, when Sleeman, Assistant to the AGC, SNT, suggested that the Company taske over the administration of district Bhilsa from the Gwalior regime and set up an establishment for the protection of travellers, the proposal was rejected, not only became the Gwalior darbar would object but also because it would be a heavy expense. Swinton, G. W., Chief Secy, to Smith, F. C., AGG, SNT, 4 August. 1830, Mss. Eur D1188, IOL. H. H. Spry, medical officer at Sagar, recalled that booty recovered from thugs was enough to pay for all incidental charges of the department up to 1834 and also to finance the building of two new prison houses at SagarGoogle Scholar. Spry, H. H.Modem India (London, 1837), pp. 162–3.Google Scholar

²⁴ Taylor, Meadows, Confessions of a Thug (1839, new edn, Oxford University Press, New York, 1986), intro. p. 5, emphasis added.Google Scholar

²⁵ Smith, F. C. to Macnaghten, W. H., Secy, 26 June 1833, files for the T&D, National Archives of India, Home Department (hereafter Home Dept T&D), Cons B.2, no. 4, p. 295.Google Scholar

²⁶ Smith, F. C., AGG, SNT, to Chief Secy to Govt, 20 06 1832, CLWCB vol. II, 1977, pp. 836–7.Google Scholar

²⁷ On the south lay Hyderabad and Berar, to the North and West, Bhopal, Gwalior, Bundelkhand and Baghelkhand.

²⁸ The Agent was assisted by Political Officers drawn from both the civil and military services of the Company. The ‘Politicals’ combined the duties of revenue collector, civil judge and magistrate, and had the same powers to arrest and try offenders as the magistrate in the regulation districts. The Agent held biennial sessions in his judicial capacity as Commissioner of this territory.

²⁹ Shore, F. J., Offg Commr SNT, to Secy, Sadar Board of Revenue, Allahabad, 7 May 1836, Home Misc. vol. 790, IOL, p. 422.Google Scholar

³⁰ Reeves, for instance, accepts this mythicization of the campaign. ‘Once his [i.e., Sleeman's] officers were armed with a systematic account of the signals it was possible to identify thugs and thug operations’. Reeves, P. D., introduction to Sleeman in Oudh. An Abridgement of W. H. Sleeman's A Journey through the Kingdom of Oudh in 1849–50 (Cambridge, 1971), p. 12.Google Scholar

³¹ That is, those prisoners who confessed to their crime and agreed to give evidence against their accomplices in return for pardon or remission of their own sentence.

³² Cf.Singha, Radhika, ‘A “Despotism of Law”: British Criminal Justice and Public Authority in North India, 1772–1837’, Ph. D., Cambridge University, 1990.Google Scholar

³³ The committee appointed in 1831 to consider improvements in the police of the Bengal districts remarked, for instance, that ‘the urgency of changes arises from its extreme uppopularity rather than from any increased disposition to crime/ Committee to F. J. Halliday, Secy, Bengal Govt Judicial Dept 18 Aug. 1838, Committee on the Improvement of Mofussil Police, Bengal, 1838, p . 2, v/26,/150/1, IOL.Google Scholar

³⁴ Auckland for instance suggested that Sleeman postpone the publication of his report on ‘gang robbery hereditary profession’, till more progress had been made in putting it down. Sleeman, W. H., Journey through the Kingdom of Oudh in 1849–50, vol. I (London, 1858), p. xxvi.Google Scholar

³⁵ As, for instance, the Multanis of central India: they were described by Malcolm in 1823 as carriers and traders in cattle who also engaged in some cultivation, and placed among the ‘civil classes’ of Muslims even though they were armed. Sleeman described them in 1836 as a class of ‘ancient thugs’, ‘said to call themselves Naiks, and to travel and trade as Brinjaras’, and Ramsay, G., in 1850 termed them ‘a tribe of Dacoits’ who up to the breaking out of war with the British were ‘ostensibly traders in cattle’.Google ScholarMalcolm, , Memoir of Central India, vol. II, p. 113, Sleeman, Ramaseeana, p. 117, andGoogle ScholarRamsay, G., Asst Resident Nagpur, and Genl Supt for the Suppression of T&D, to Resident Nagpur, 31 08. 1850Google Scholar, H. M. Elliot Papers, Mss Eur 314, IOL. Bagris, or Bagureeas, described by Malcolm as robbers under their own chiefs, and soldiers under native princes, were described by Sleeman, in Ramaseeana, 1836, as a ‘class of thugs who reside chiefly about Soopar in the Gwalior territories’ and in his 1849 publication as a class of dacoits by hereditary profession.Google ScholarMalcolm, , Memoir of Central India, vol. II; Ramaseeana, p. 75; Report on Budhuk Decoits, 1849.Google Scholar

³⁶ This would qualify Stewart Gordon's argument that ‘Sleeman's eventual success in persuading the Government of India is a gauge of the triumph of the Evangelical crusading philosophy of British Indian administration over the “preservation of Indian customs”.’Cf. Gordon, Stewart N., ‘Scarf and Sword: Thugs, Marauders, and State-formation in Eighteenth Century Malwa’, Indian Economic and Social History Review (hereafter IESHR), VI, 4 (12 1969), 403–29, for a very perceptive article on this phenomenon.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

³⁷ The Pindaris, better described as a phenomenon than as a particular community, emerged in central India as bands of military auxiliaries, who served the various powers in that area, in particular Holkar and Sindhia, and began to acquire a territorial foothold on the Narbada. Those with a horse had been used by Indian princes to skirmish with the enemy's army and to pursue it into retreat; among their numbers were also those who would forage for the army, carry grain to it, and dispose of their own booty and that of others in the aftermath of a successful campaign.

³⁸ ‘… the atrocity of their character… forbad the degradation of negotiating with them… At the same time I saw the intimacy of the connection between the Pindarris and the Mahrattahs so distinctly, as to be certain that an attempt to destroy the former must infallibly engage us in war with the whole body of the latter.’ Address by Marquess of Hastings to Court of Directors, 1823, in Bevan, H., Thirty Years in India, vol. I (London, 1839), pp. 187–8.Google ScholarCf. Lt Fitzclarence, Col, Journal of a Route across India, through Egypt to England in the Latter End of the Year 1817, and the Beginning of 1818 (London, 1819), p. 41, for his characterization of the Pindaris as ‘enemies who were to be considered in the light of public robbers.’Google ScholarMalcolm, J. also refused to accept that the Pindaris resembled the Marathas at the point of their political emergence. Malcolm, Memoir of Central India, vol. I, pp. 427-8.Google Scholar

³⁹ Lt Col. Fitzclarence, ,Journal of a Route, p. 41.Google Scholar

⁴⁰ Ibid.

⁴¹ Political letter to the court, 25 November 1818, para. 23, in Sinha, B. K., The Pindaris (1798–1818) (Bookland, Calcutta, 1971), p. 174.Google Scholar

Pindari leaders and their immediate followers were given grants of land to ‘settle’ them in Bhopal and in Gorakhpur, ibid., pp. 175–83.

⁴² Malcolm wrote that many of the Pindaris were from the ‘lowest of the labouring classes’, almost all the Hindus being Ladul, ‘a low class whose usual occupation is to bring grass and firewood to camps.’ He also remarked that the dispersion of the Pindaris had increased the class of Muslim cultivators, artisans and labourers, for many Hindus of low caste who had joined them had become Muslims. Malcolm, , Memoir of Central India vol. II, pp. 176, 177. Sita Ram Sepoy, says the Pindaris always had better information than the British forces, and describes the people of Bundelkhand as being on their side.Google ScholarLunt, James (ed.), From Sepoy to Subedar, being the Life and Adventures of Subedar Sita Ram, a Native Officer of the Bengal Army Written and Related by Himself(1st edn, 1875, London, 1988), pp. 38, 46.Google Scholar

⁴³ The followers of the Pindaris, wrote Malcolm, ‘are lost in that population, from the dregs of which they originally issued. A minute investigation only can discover these once formidable disturbers, concealed as they now are amongst the lowest classes, where they are making some amends for past atrocities, by the benefit which is derived from their labour in restoring trade and cultivation.’ Malcolm, , Memoir of Central india, vol. I, p. 462. Cf. also, Sinha, The Pindaris, p. 176.Google Scholar

⁴⁴ Malcolm begins the chapter on the population of central India with the statement that he would start with a brief view of the different tribes, and ‘conclude by a classification that will distinguish those who follow peaceable occupations from the number who still consider arms their sole profession.’ Malcolm, , Memoir of Central India, vol. II, p. 106.Google Scholar

Elsewhere he uses the distinction ‘civil classes’ and ‘the predatory and turbulent classes’, ibid., p. 224.

⁴⁵ Ibid., p. 174 for the Mewatis, the Pathans, Arabs etc. With the restoration of tranquillity, wrote Malcolm, the first class would return to cultivation and the other sort would have no option but to take up peaceable pursuits, while ‘foreign’ mercenaries would be expelled, ibid.

⁴⁶ Ibid., pp. 173–4.

⁴⁷ Ibid., pp. 185–8.

⁴⁸ Taylor, Meadows, Confessions of a Thug, p. 336.Google Scholar

⁴⁹ Ramaseeana, pp. 4–5. But cf. Bentinck's ‘Minute on the affairs of Rajputana and Delhi’ for a reference to bodies of plunderers, the ‘remnants of the Maratha Pindari evil’ who had lost their occupation as a ‘legitimate trade’ and now had to be put down.CLWCB, II, p. 787. Ochterlony, resident in Malwa and Rajputana, had also drawn a connection between the suppression of the Pindaris and the emergence of thuggee. ‘By a Dispatch from Mr. Wellesley of 5th Feburay to your address, His Lordship in Council will have seen that, out of the Pindari System has arisen another, not of open violence, but if possible, more sanguinary, as it seems to be almost universal practice to insure the concealment of the act of Robbery, by perpetrating the Crime of Murder.’Google Scholar; Ochterlony, D., Resident, Malwa and Rajputana to G. Swinton, Secy, Pol. Dept, 30 04 1882, in Seleclion from Ochterlony Papers, p. 243.Google Scholar

⁵⁰ Sleeman, W. H. to Bird, W. G., 5 April 1839, Home Dept, T&D, Cons G.8,07 1838–Aug. 1839.Google Scholar

⁵¹ Cf. Fanny Eden's acidic comments on Captain Paton, who was a ‘great Thug fancier… and makes positive pets of some’ and on Europeans who having had much to do with their examination view them ‘in a most romantic light’. Dunbar, J. (ed.), Tigers, Durbars and Kings, Fanny Eden's Indian Journals, 1837–38 (London, 1988), p. 120, 104.Google Scholar Also, Eden, Emily, Up the County: Letters from India (repr., London, Virago, 1983), pp. 59–60.Google Scholar

⁵² Lt Reynolds, , ‘Notes on the T'hags’, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (hereafter JRAS), IV (1836), 200–13. Perhaps the term ‘thief' was rejected because it suggested they might prey on their neighbours’ property, or steal goods entrusted to them, thus jeopardizing their position within their own community.Google Scholar Cf. Paton, J. papers, BM Addl Mss 41300, pp. 24–5.Google Scholar

⁵³ Ramaseeana, pp. 76–7. Cf. also the qualified responses of approvers Nasir and Sahib Khan when Sleeman quizzed them on the suppression of thuggee in the Deccan;Google Scholar in Tuker, F., The Yellow Scarf (London, 1961), Appendix 2, pp. 192–3. In general the prisoners tended to blame their own actions, their non-observance of the rules which brought access to supernatural power, rather than the ‘defeat’ of the source of power itself.Google Scholar

⁵⁴ Of a gang seized in Kotah, Ochterlony had reported that ‘tho’ very few acknowledge the Commission of any particular Robbery—Yet of the whole number there are I think four who deny their being Thieves by Profession and associated for the purposes of Robbery.’ Ochterlony, D., Resident in Malwa, and Rajputana, , to Secy, Pol. Dept, 30 04 1822, Selections from Ochterlony Papers, p. 244.Google Scholar Cf. also deposition of Singh, Dhokul, 7 05 1839, arrested as a dacoit of the Baurie tribe. ‘The Kunjurs are all thieves, they cut grass and make choppers… but always thieve … The Nutts dance, beat drum, and amuse people with their tricks, but they are at the same time, all thieves. Those who go about with snakes, are all thieves …’.Report on Budhak Decoits, p. 323, cf. also p. 256, pp. 33, 31.Google Scholar

⁵⁵ Hay, Douglas, ‘War, Dearth and Theft in the Eighteenth Century: the Record of the English Courts’, Past and Present 95 (05 1982), 117–60, 120, 158–9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁵⁶ In criminal proceedings one often comes across a distinction made by the offender between the sort of crimes he would or would not engage in. For instance, a Dosadh, a low caste labourer, interrogated for robbing a British lieutenant declared: ‘I was not a Camp thief that I should rob the Pultun (regiment) but only thieved for my own livelihood.’ Declaration of Bholah Dosadh, village Pondahpoor, pargana Ballia, 4 March 1788, Bengal Revenue Consultations, P/51/25, 3 Oct. 1788, p. 735, IOL.

⁵⁷ Cf. Beier, A. L., Masterless Men, The Vagrancy Problem in England (London, 1985), ch. 5, for a fascinating exploration of the strategies and resources open for those who had to take to the road in sixteenth and seventeenth-century England, either as a permanent way of life, or on the thin line between migration and vagrancy.Google Scholar

⁵⁸ Cf. deposition of Dhokul Singh, cited in fn.54 above.

⁵⁹ ‘Badhaks’ was one of the denominations by which certain bands who live on the margins of forests were known. Such bands engaged in hunting and fowling, and had in the past provided irregular levies for the army of the Nawab of Awadh or swelled the retinues of powerful zamindars. Their skill with bow and spear and their tradition of association with military raiding allowed some of them to organize lightning raids on consignments of treasure, often at a great distance from their own residence. Cf. Resident Banaras to GG in C, 22 05 1791, BRJ, P/127/74, 15 July 1791, p. 603, IOL for an early reference to such hunting bands.

⁶⁰ Sleeman, , Report on Budhuk Decoits, p. 130.Google Scholar

The Rajah of Kottar is referred to as keeping bands of Badhaks to supply his table with game, ibid., p. 54. S. Nigam stresses the peasant origins of thugs and Badhaks which, he argues, was ignored by official discourse.

Nigam, S., ‘Disciplining and Policing the “Criminals by Birth”, Part 2: The Development of a Disciplinary System, 1871–1900’, IESHR XXVII, 3 (07–09 1990), 274–75. I stress instead the diversity of occupation and the process by which colonial order rested on channeling these various elements into the ranks of agricultural labour, or later, as Meena Radhakrishna shows, into the ranks of quarry, factory and mine labour.Google ScholarRadhakrishna, Meena, ‘The Criminal Tribes Act in the Madras Presidency: Implication for Itinerant Trading Communities’, IESHR XXVI, 3 (07–09 1989), 269–95.Google Scholar

⁶¹ Khan, Baz, tried in Jabbalpur in 1826, is reported to have stated ‘almost vauntingly that his forefathers for seven preceding generations have been Thugs of the Badshahee Duftur, or enrolled as thugs in the Royal records at Dehly’. Administration of justice in the SNT, Bengal Judl letter, 12 07 1827, BC F/4/1159, IOL, p. 48.Google Scholar

⁶² Nasir, thug approver, said that those who had committed an ordinary murder would be haunted, but not if the murder was committed in the course of a thug expedition. Such murders were sanctioned by the Devi, . Ramaseeana, pp. 175–6.Google Scholar

⁶³ Deposition of Imamee, 19 August 1831, forwarded by Sleeman, W. H. to Resident, Nagpur, 17 10. 1831, in Sinha, H. N. (ed.), Selections from the Nagpur Residency Records, vol. IV, 1818–1846 (Nagpur, 1954), p. 274.Google Scholar

⁶⁴ Malcolm, , Memoir of Central India vol. II, p. 177.Google Scholar

⁶⁵ Campbell, G., Memoirs of my Indian Career, vol. I (London, 1893), p. 66.Google Scholar

⁶⁶ Gordon, , ‘Scarf and sword’, p. 413.Google Scholar

⁶⁷ Cf. Smith, F.C., 11 March 1831, in Bruce, The Stranglers, p. 114.Google Scholar

⁶⁸ ‘We require to raise them a little in their own esteem, and make them feel a little exalted as the servants of the state… The terms Sarkar ka Naukar and a decent appearance have a wonderful effect in making them exert themselves.’ Sleeman, W. H. to Major Stewart, resident, Hyderabad, 16 07 1832, Home, T&D, Cons G.I, 06 1832–05 1833, pp. 66–7.Google Scholar

⁶⁹ Ramaseeana, p. 186.Google Scholar

⁷⁰ Paton, J. papers, BM Addl Mss 41300, p. 9.Google Scholar Some approvers suggested that they could help the police to detect other ‘classes’ of thieves as well, ibid., pp. 19, 29.

⁷¹ The men seized by Reynolds in the Nizam's territory in the early 1830s confessed to having made annual expeditions over the previous 25–30 years. Reynolds, ‘Notes on the T'hags’, p. 213. Cf. also deposition of Rambux, thug approver, 15 April 1837, Paton papers, BM Addl Mss 41300, p. 8; and Ramaseeana, Appendix I, pp. 101–10.

⁷² Ramaseeana, Appendix A.

⁷³ Cf. Sleeman's, citation of Thievenot's Travels (1687) for a reference to robbers who used a noose.Ramaseeana, p. .Google Scholar Also Smith's, V. A. editorial note in Rambles and Recollections citing the history of Firoz Shah Tughlaq (1351–1388). The following example illustrates the ‘historicization’ of ‘lore’. An approver, Feringea, had claimed that all the operations of their trade were to be seen in the sculptures at Ellora. This claim was abstracted from his other assertions about the caves — that these were the work of some unknown supernatural agents, and that everyone's trade, however secret, was described there—and given the status of a historical ‘fact’ by W. Crooke who traced thuggee into early Hindu history, stating that in the Ellora temples, C. A.D. 760, a thug was represented strangling Brahmin.Google Scholar Cf. Tuker, , The Yellow Scarf, Appendix 2, pp. 197–8 forGoogle Scholar

Feringea's account, and ibid., p. 63, for Crooke's rendition in Things Indian.

⁷⁴ Reynolds, ‘Notes on the T'hags’ p. 201. Sleeman traced the historical roots of thuggee through this feature. The Thugs, he writes, were the descendants of the Sagartii, a pastoral group of Persian descent who put their enemies to death by throwing a leather noose over them. Some descendants of the Sagartii, Sleeman supposes, must have accompanied the Muslim invaders of India and settled in the neighbourhood of Delhi.Google ScholarRamaseeana, pp. 4, 11.Google Scholar

⁷⁵ Cf. deposition of Dorga, for an assembly of 200 thugs at a village in Nagpur in 1809 or 1810 who had murdered a party of 40, Ramaseeana, Appendix H, p. 101;Google Scholar

a party of about 350 thugs who had killed a party of 60 sent to recruit soldiers from Hindustan (North India) in 1813, ibid., Appendix I, p. 110. In 1810 the magistrate of Chittoor reported that before accession to the Company the phansigars sheltered by the petty poligars had set out in larger gangs, but now gangs were smaller and their plans less systematic.

Thornton, , Illustrations, 1837, p. 272. Between 1810 and 1814 the magistrates of Aligarh, Etawah and Kanpur tried to drive out suspected thugs from the Doab districts conquered from the Marathas. Of the thugs in villages contiguous to Gwalior territory the magistrate of Etawah said they ‘committed their thuggees more like bandittis, openly in large bodies, attacking and plundering bodies of travellers, not taking any care to conceal the crime by hiding the bodies…’, Magt Etawah to Actg SP, WP, 7 Aug. 1815, and G. Stockwell, Joint Magistrate Etawah to T. Perry, Magt Zillah Etawah (nd.) inGoogle ScholarThornton, , Illustrations, pp. 321–7.Google Scholar

⁷⁶ A characteristic example was the assertion that the Bhawani temple at Mirzapur, a popular site of pilgrimage, was filled with thugs and subsidized by their offerings. Sleeman's, W. H. letter to the Calcutta Literary Gazette, 30 10. 1837Google Scholar, in Bruce, , The Stranglers, pp. 81–2,Google Scholar and Lt Reynolds, , ‘Note on T'hags’, p. 202.Google Scholar

⁷⁷ Cf.Kumaon, Commr to SP, Delhi, 23 09. 1823 for a reference to ‘motley assemblies’ of people in the foothills, ‘persons of the lower classes engaged in the cutting and transporting of timber and other Jungle products, together with Brinjaras, Herdsmen, shikaris, and ca. and ca.’ Since the conquest of Kumaon, he reported, these areas were assuming order. Commissioner's Office Kumaon, Pre-Mutiny, Judl letters issued, 1822–1825, Basta 23, Uttar Pradesh State Archives (hereafter UPSA).Google Scholar Cf. also Sleeman to Macnaghten, W. H., 10 Sept. 1836, on classes ‘known’ to practice thuggee though none had as yet been convicted; those who roamed with bears and monkeys, daturias, poisoners, Bairagis, mendicants, and Multanis, a class of transporters. Home, T&D, Cons G.4, 09. 1836–03 1838, pp. 23–5.Google Scholar

⁷⁸ J. A. R. Stevenson of the Madras Civil Service sent in a paper to the Royal Asiatic society which put an account of ‘P'hansigars’, stranglers, together with an account of the ‘Shudgarshids’ a ‘tribe of jugglers and fortune tellers’ described as ‘notorious for kidnapping children’ and for an ‘abominable traffic’ in the sale of sinews as charms against evil. ‘Some Account of the P'Hansigars, or Gang-robbers and of the Shudgarshids, or Tribe of Jugglers.’ JRAS, I (London, 1836), 280–4.Google Scholar

⁷⁹ Cf. Judge Magistrate Jaunpur, 15 08. 1815; for a complaint about religious vagrants exacting tribute, and for a reference to fakirs giving poison to pilgrims to rob them. Home Misc 775, IOL, pp. 620, 628. Shore's suggestions for a ‘punitive discipline’ of arrest and punishment with hard labour for all such ‘idle scamps’, and the registration and surveillance of all stationary fakirs was typical of the official attitude.Google ScholarShore, J., Notes on Indian Affairs, II (London, 1837), pp. 411–12. In the 1820s and 1830s missionaries attacked the government for associating itself with the collection of pilgrim tax; and this mingled with utilitarian arguments against he loss of productive labour and life which pilgrimage was supposed to entail.Google ScholarStatham, J., Indian Recollections (London, 1832), pp. 138, 144, 159Google Scholar; Peggs, J., Pilgrim Tax in India (2nd edn, enlarged, London, 1830), p. 47.Google Scholar

⁸⁰ Report on Budhuk Decoits, 1849, p. 268. However, he also acknowledged that religious mendicancy had been the ‘great safety valve through which the unquiet transition spirit has found vent under our strong and settled government.’Google ScholarSleeman, W. H., Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official, vol. I (1st edn, 1844, Westminster, 1894), p. 446.Google Scholar

⁸¹ Ibid., p. 83.

⁸² Cf. Ramaseeana, pp. 85, 144, 126 for references to Multani, Lodaha and Qulundera thugs.Google Scholar

⁸³ Capt. Briggs, J., ‘Account of the Origin, History and Manners of the Race of Men called Bunjaras’, Bombay Transactions, I (1819), 159–83.Google ScholarVarady, R. G., ‘North India Banjaras: Their Evolution as Transporters’, South Asia, new series, II, 1 and 2 (03–09. 1979), 1–18.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁸⁴ Cf. Balfour, E., ‘On the Migratory Tribes of Natives in Central India’, JRAS 13,I (1844), 29–47 for a sampling.Google Scholar

⁸⁵ ‘… it May be conjectured that many persons, deprived by the declension of the Mohammedan power of their wonted resources, were tempted to recourse to criminal courses to get their subsistence’. Sherwood, Observations, ‘Observations Regarding Badheks and Th'egs’, p. 271.Google Scholar

⁸⁶ Rambles and Recollections, pp. 443–6.Google Scholar

⁸⁷ There was a continuous debate about policy towards the irregular cavalry contingents of the native rulers whose armies were to be reorganized under the subsidiary system. Writing in 1817–1818 Lt Col. Fitzclarence noted that the dismissal of irregular cavalry from the British army and from the forces of princes who had entered into subsidiary treaties had been afoot for at least thirty years. Referring to a complaint made in the Seir Mutaqherin about the resulting loss of employment he commented: ‘How much more must they now feel it when our empire, or the system under our influence, that of subsidizing, has extended over about three-fourths of India.’ Lt Col. Fitzclarence Journial of a Route, p. 266. Cf.Malcolm, , Memoir of Central India, vol. II, p. 107, for the decline in opportunities of service for Muslims of the military class in the wake of British victories.Google Scholar

⁸⁸ Stewart Gordon points out that ‘thugs’ did not enter the folk lore of bandits and robbers. ‘Scarf and Sword’, pp. 408–9. Shakespear reported that the word ‘thug’ was used in the Western provinces, to describe those who robbed and murdered in the highways but that the literal meaning was villain, rascal, or knave, ‘Observations’, Asiatick Researches (1820), 287–8.

⁸⁹ Cf. Sharma, R. C., ‘Aspects of Public Administration in Northern India in the First Half of the Seventeenth Century’, in Journal of Indian History LIV, I (04 1976), 107–15, 112.Google Scholar

⁹⁰ Cf. , Aurangzeb's farman of 1672, ‘A copy of farman with preface of justice containing thirty-three sections’, ordering punishment for a strangler who was ‘habituated to this misdeed… or is notorious among people for this misdeed and the Nazim of the Subah knows about it or vestiges of strangulation and property of people are found with him…’ Mirat-i-Ahmadi [A Persian History of Gujerat]Google Scholar, Khan, Muhammad, transl. (M. F. Lokhandwala, Oriental Institute, Baroda, 1965), p. 249.Google Scholar

⁹¹ Meadows Taylor for instance, asserts at one point that the system of thuggee was unsuspected by the people of India, but a couple of pages later he says that landholders and chiefs of villages had had connections with thugs for generations. Introduction to Confessions of a Thug, pp. 1, 3.

⁹² Trevelyan, C. E., ‘The Thugs or Secret Murderers of India’, The Edinburgh Review LXIV (1837), 357–95.Google ScholarCf. also J. Paton, BM, Addnl Ms 41300, p. 278.Google Scholar

⁹³ Of the Badhaks, Paton, Assistant Resident, Lucknow argued that ‘being from their mode of promiscuous eating “Sear Khowas” outcastes from the other classes of Indian society’, they could not mingle with them and this bound them to each other and to robbery. Memo by Paton, J. to Caulfield, Actg Resident, 25 01. 1840, Foreign Political, A, 9 03 1840, no. 122, NAI. Criteria such as dietary habits and a wandering way of life were deployed to lump diverse groups into one social category, as for instance under the term ‘Badhak’. Shakespear, Police Superintendent for the Western provinces, classified as ‘tribes of jackal eaters’ the groups known as Badhaks, Kanjar, Gidia, Bauria, and Harbura, because all ‘subsist by robbing and are more or less attached to a vagrant life, eating the flesh of jackals, lizards, '. The putting of diverse groups with different traditions under arbitrary categories could, however, create problems of consistency. For instance: ‘The Badheks of Aligarh and the Shigal Khors of Gorakhpur are outcasts of Muslims and Hindus — however the majority are Rajputs.’Google ScholarShakespear, , 1816, ‘Observations Regarding Badheks and T'hegs’, pp. 282–3.Google Scholar

⁹⁴ Plunder obtained by murder was spent on ‘debauchery and indulgence’ wrote Stevenson, J. A. R., ‘Some Account of the P'hansigars, or Gang-robbers and of the Shu'dgarshids’, p. 280. Briggs attributed the poverty of the Banjaras to their ‘dissolute and wandering habits’ and their drinking. ‘Account of the… Bunjaras’, p. 181.Google Scholar

⁹⁵ Balfour reports that Indian rulers used to inflict fines and even death upon the Bauries, who obtained their living from the forest, if they pilfered from fields and stacks of grain. Balfour, , ‘On the Migratory Tribes’, p. 35.Google Scholar

⁹⁶ Sleeman, , Report on Budhuk Decoits, p. 265.Google Scholar

⁹⁷ Sahib Khan a thug ‘approver’ from a Telingana band claimed they were high caste Muslims, vehemently denying that they were Kanjars, a class of low caste peripatetic grain traders. Ramaseeana, p. 162. One band referred to another disparagingly as Handeewuls suggesting they ate in old and dirty plates, Ramaseeana, p. 95. Captain Ramsay noted of the ‘Sansi dacoits’ that though they were often styled Kanjars, they would not admit the appellation, stating that the Kanjars were all Muslims. Report on Budhuk Decoits, p. 253.

⁹⁸ Report on Budhuk Decoits, pp. 253, 261, 283.Google Scholar

⁹⁹ Cf.Ramaseeana, Appendix I, pp. 101–10, and Appendix T, pp. 294–5, for a description of this situation in Central India in the early nineteenth century.

¹⁰⁰ Gordon, ‘Scarf and Sword’, pp. 425, 428.

¹⁰¹ Ibid., p. 428. Gordon points out that many of the elements of organization which the British regarded as peculiar to the thugs were in fact common to many criminal bands. But it can be argued that these could be common to military contingents or mercenary bands as well.

¹⁰² Cf.Ramaseeana, Appendix X, pp. 288, 397, 411, for the depositions of some prisoners arrested at Dekola in 1829. Amanoolah had been connected with the Phansigars for two years, Khaimraj had joined the gang only in the previous year, Poorun said his father had been a cultivator, and he had joined at the age of thirty but had not accompanied the gang on every expedition, but cultivated land at intervals. In his autobiography, Lutfullah, who became a Persian munshi, recounts an incident in which he encountered a Muslim thug, Juma, on the road to Gohad. Juma invited him to join his band, ‘telling me that he had already found I was no more than a mercenary like himself, and even, in my young days, had no friend in the world’.Google ScholarAutobiography of Lutfullah (1st edn, 1857, with an introduction by Tirmizi, S. A. I., International Writers' Emporium, New Delhi, 1985), p. 75.Google Scholar

¹⁰³ BC F/774/1824–25, IOL, for the deposition of Heera Ahir, before the Resident at the court of Holkar, , 29 05 1819; ‘forced by hunger’ he had left his village to come to the town of Gwalior where Ram Din, who had a gang of 20 thugs, had taken him into service.Google ScholarCf. Ramaseeana, pp. 34–7 for an account of a linen draper of Hingolee cantonment who had engaged in thuggee on the roads, and knew other thugs living in that city; Ramaseeana, Appendix T, for the discovery in 1823 of thugs living in the bazaar of Jalnah who had been selling items of plunder in the town. Cf. Sahib Khan's disapproving reference to one Muder Khan, who had built up a gang of fifty thugs ‘weavers, braziers, bracelet-makers and all kinds of ragamuffins’Google Scholar in Bruce, , The Stranglers, p. 69.Google Scholar

¹⁰⁴ Gordon, , ‘Scarf and Sword’, p. 407. Cf. Nigam, ‘A Social History of a Colonial Stereotype’, p. 25 for a similar position.Google Scholar

¹⁰⁵ ‘… the most trifling sum is an inducement to commit murder.’ Magistrate Chittoor to Secy judl Dept, 1 July 1812, Ramaseeana, Appendix U, p. 309, ‘The booty… is often so trifling…sometimes not exceeding one rupee, or the clothes on the person's body—that it appears as if the P'hansigars, found a delight and a pastime in such deeds of blood.’ Stevenson, , ‘Account of the P'hansigars’, JRAS, vol. I.Google Scholar

¹⁰⁶ This was the explanation given by a grandson of Sleeman, Sleeman, J. L., Thug or a Million Murdrs (London, 1933), p. 5.Google Scholar

¹⁰⁷ Cf. Ramaseeana, Appendix T, pp. 278–82, for a list of articles found with a gang of thugs operating between Jalna and Aurungabad who were apprehended in 1823. These goods are sometimes the most ordinary articles of daily use, pots and pans and clothes. Among the victims whom the thugs listed were a Bairagi (a religious mendicant) some mendicant Brahmins, and a barber, whose instruments were found among the haul. Cf. Ramaseeana, Appendix X, 389–90, deposition of Amanoolah, for the murder of a Mullah (a scholar), a Bairagi, and a barber. Ramaseeana, p. 399, deposition of Khaimraj, for the murder of rasdharis (strolling actors). Paton, examining some thug approvers at Lucknow, asked if they would murder for a rupee. Allaya denied this, Dhoosoo said judiciously: ‘if we expected a share of 8 annas each we would murder him’, and later again says that they would not murder for a very small sum, ‘unless indeed we were hard pressed for subsistence …’Google ScholarPaton, J., BM, Addl Ms, 41300, pp. 17, 148.Google Scholar

¹⁰⁸ Unless somebody very important had been murdered or substantial sums of money lost, those connected with the victims usually thought they had no hope of discovering which particular sort of calamity had overtaken the traveller and had much to fear from visits to distant courts and constant attendance on the police.

¹⁰⁹ Cf., Thornton , Illustrations, pp. 275, 286–7, 314–15 for the proceedings of various magistrates on thuggee cases between 1809 and 1814, and the use of pardons to obtain evidence. The accomplice was to receive a pardon after he had given his evidence on oath before the Sessions judge. A pardon was not supposed to be extended to anyone very prominent in the crime or to the leader of a dacoit or thug gang. Reg. 10, 1824, and Reg. 1, 1829. In 1836 Sleeman suggested that this qualification be suspended because the gang leaders were more dependable and had more information.Google ScholarSleeman, W. H. to Macnaghten, W. H., Secy, 27 05 1838, Home Dept, 1838, T&D Cons B.2, no. 13.Google Scholar

¹¹⁰ In the rules of evidence in the regulation provinces the accomplice who confessed and pointed out the place of concealment of the body was only held to have proved his own participation in the act. If his evidence was not supported by other circumstantial evidence it was considered insufficient to prove the guilt of those he named as his accomplices.

¹¹¹ Cf.George, H. St., for an 1815 memorandum criticizing the use of goindas, stressing the danger of ‘the licensed freebooter who acts under the sanction of the law.’Google ScholarMemorials of Indian Government, Kaye, J. W. (ed.) (London, 1853).Google Scholar

¹¹² Sherwood complained of the difficulties of ‘the Mohammedan criminal law; which admitting not the testimony of accomplices, and rarely the sufficiency of strong circumstancial evidence unless confirmed by the confession of the culprits, their adherence to their protestations of innocence has alone, but too frequently, exempted them from punishment’, Ramaseeana, Appendix U, p. 352. It was not very clear whether the position in Islamic law was that the evidence of accomplices was not admissible at all or whether it was not to be given any weight by the judge.

¹¹³ Cf. also Construction no. 558: a fatwa convicting upon strong presumption (zun-i-ghalibar-shoobuh-i-cuvee) is a fatwa of conviction. Beaufort, F. L., A Digest of Criminal Law of the Presidency of Fort William and a Guide to all Criminal Authorities Therein, pt I (Calcutta, 1857), p. 233. In the first major trial of suspected thugs held in a sessions court after the inauguration of special operations the Muslim law officers held that the prisoners were guilty to the extent of akoobut, strong suspicion. By the terms of Regulation 53, 1803, the British judge could now go ahead and award the death sentence. Cf. Ramaseeana.Google Scholar

¹¹⁴ Regulation 17, Sections 2–4, 1817, empowered the Nizamat Adalat to overrule the fatwas of the law officers in all cases in which it disagreed with them. If the Sessions Judge disagreed with the fatwa of his law officer, he could send the case to the Nizamat Adalat, which would consult its own law officers, but had the authority to make the final decision.

¹¹⁵ Cf.Smith, F. C., AGG, SNT, to Macnaghten, W. H., Secy, Pol. Dept, 26 06 1833, Home, 1833, T&D, Cons B.2, no. 4.Google Scholar

¹¹⁶ In a charge of dacoity upon ‘strong suspicion, though not amounting to conviction, as well as upon proof of notorious bad character, the judge of circuit May direct the magistrate to keep the prisoner in custody till security is given for good behaviour and for appearance when required.’ Reg. 53, S. 2, 1803. The amount of security, the period for which it was required and the period of detention if it could not be given was not specified in this regulation. It was left to the discretion of the judge. Discretion to apprehend and demand security was also given to the magistrate against the ‘vagrant’, and the badmaash, paraphrased in proceedings as ‘of bad character’, ‘keeping bad company’, suspected of ‘bad livelihood’. Reg. 22, S. 10, 5. 31, 5. 33, 1793; Reg. 17, S. 10, s. 29, S. 32, 1795; Reg. 14, cl. 7, s. II, 1807; Reg. 35, s. 10, s. 15, s. 24, 1803 Reg. 20, s. 20, cl. 2, 1817 (Regulation, section, clause).

¹¹⁷ The magistrate could detain the badmaash for one year on security. if his release without giving security was still considerd dangerous, his case had to be sent up to the Sessions Judge who could have the prisoner detained for up to three years if security was not given, Reg. 8, s. 9, 1818.

¹¹⁸ Reg. 8, s. 4, S. 10, 1818, Construction 771, 22 March 1833, and Construction 823, 30 Aug. 1833.

¹¹⁹ Act XXIV of 1843 extended the provisions of the thuggee Act to the offence of belonging to a dacoit gang.

¹²⁰ For instance, in 1828 the Superintendent of Police for the Western Provinces submitted a draft of an Act to punish vagrants apprehended with poison and other articles in their possession, ‘which May excite suspicion that they are thugs by profession’. The draft also suggested a fixed term of 7 years for suspicion of being a thug (i.e. as deduced from the articles in possession). SP, WP to Secy Judi Dept, 19 Feb. 1828, Bengal (Criminal) Judicial Proceedings (hereafter BCJ), P/139/13, 6 March 1828, IOL. However, the Nizamat Adalat rejected this proposition, one of its judges holding that it would introduce ‘legalised oppression by the police’ and another arguing that ‘thuggee’ was not a sufficiently precise term and that it would be difficult to distinguish which articles were used for criminal purposes. Register, Nizamat Adalat (hereafter Regr, NA), to Offg Chief Secy Judl Dept, 2 May 1828, BCJ P/139/15, 22 May 1828, no. 5, IOL.

¹²¹ Lt., Moodie, Assistant Agent Bundelkhand, to Secy, Swinton, 3 February. 1824, no. 44, pp. 22–39, BC F/4/984, 1828–29, IOL. Forwarding his letter to the government, the Agent, Majoribanks wrote: ‘I apprehend the circumstances of the case as reported by Lieutenant Moodie under the existing regulations of Government are not such as would justify a permanent sentence of imprisonment against them.’ BC F/4/984, 1828–1929, IOL.Google Scholar

¹²² Ibid.

¹²³ Ross, , third Judge Bareilly, Court of Circuit (hereafter CC), to Judge, Bareilly CC, 21 04 1816, BC F/4/581, 1819–20, IOL, pp. 39–47. In 1822, called upon to explain the increase in dacoities in Gorakhpur, the magistrate of Gorakhpur suggested that ‘military punishment’ such as that carried out against the Pindaris ought to be carried out against the ‘Seah murwahs’ (categorized as Badhaks) of the neighbouring districts of Balrampur and Atroula in Awadh. In addition a regulation ought to authorize the Magistrates or the Courts of Circuit to sentence any ‘Seah Murwah’ found in parties, armed or not, within British boundaries, to a term of confinement.Google ScholarBird, R. M., Magt Gorakhpur to Prinsep, H. T., Actg Chief Secy, 1104 1822, Report on Budhuk Decoits, pp. 13–14.Google Scholar

¹²⁴ Second Judge Bareilly CC to Regr NA, 27 April 1816, BC F/4/58,, 1819–20, pp. 24–33, IOL.

¹²⁵ Ibid. This judge suggested that all daoits could be deported to special dacoity villages on wasteland to serve a period of compulsory labour as part of the sentence on the lines of the punishment of transportation in England. But this was to follow from regular trial and a fixed term of sentence, ibid., pp. 33–7. The senior judge opposed any new measures, arguing that the powers of the magistrate to confine until security was given were adequate. British administration would make the Badhaks as ‘peaceable and industrious’ as other natives, Senior Judge Bareilly CC, 1 March 1816, ibid., pp. 337. The Nizamat Adalat concurred with the suggestion that the Raja and Thakur be made to establish the Badhaks as cultivators.

¹²⁶ Circular order (hereafter CO), Nizamat Adalat, no159, 24 02. 1810, Carrau, J., The Circular Orders of the Niamat Adalat, 1796–1853 (Bengal Military Orphan Press, Calcutta, 1855);Google ScholarSkipwith, F., The Magistrate's Guide (Calcutta, 1843), p. 18. This must have been one of the orders most consistently ignored by magistrates.Google Scholar

¹²⁷ BCJ P/133/7, 14 Feb. 1817, no. 31, paras 49–50, IOL.

¹²⁸ SP, WP to Secy Judl Dept, 30 June 1817, BCJ P/133/14, 19 Aug. 1817, no. 27, para. 38, IOL.

¹²⁹ In a case against 163 Badhaks for an attack on a boat carrying treasure the charges were framed as ‘dacoity with murder’ and also as ‘being notorious Dacoits of the cast of Shigalkhors and Budheks… having. … entered the Company's provinces with an intention to commit Dacoitee. ’, Macnaghten, W. H., Reports of Cases Determined in the Nizamut Adawlut, vol. II, 1820–1826 (Calcutta, 1827), p. 125.Google Scholar

¹³⁰ Circular, 19 June 1829, Commr of Circuit, Farukhabad, to Secy, Judi Dept, 27 06 1829, BCJ P/139/42, no. 9, IOL. The village watchman was to report all suspicious strangers, the police were to obtain information from the fakir, the prostitute and the village washerman who came into contact with strangers. The fakir also came under suspicion of assisting in dacoity and thuggee.Google Scholar

Ibid. Cf. SP, WP, to Chief Secy, 31 May 1814, BCJ P/131/14, 5 June 1814, no. 32, IOL, for earlier suggestions. In 1821 a regulation was passed for action on suspicious travellers but remained a dead letter. Reg. 3, s. 7, 1821.

¹³¹ In practice, however, the police did occasionally send up travellers to the magistrate for being in possession of poisonous substances and the magistrate sometimes demanded security for good behaviour on suspicion of thuggee. Cf. abstract calendar of persons detained in custody by the magistrate until they furnished security, whose cases were examined by the Court of Circuit in 1828. This included three cases of persons ordered to give security of 50 rupees or face confinement of one year for having in their possession small quantities of poisonous substances. All of them were released by the sessions judge with the remark that the grounds for requiring security were inadequate. They had been kept in confinement for periods between three to eleven months before this review. Regr NA to Chief Secy to Govt, 18 April, no. 6, BCJ P/139/5, 8 May 1828, IOL.

¹³² Cf.Stockwell, G., Etawah, Magistrate to Waunchope, J., Magistrate Bundelkhand 14 10., in Thornton, Illustrations, p. 314–15.Google Scholar

¹³³ Actg Assistant Magt, Farukhabad, , to Magt, Farukhabad, 12 03 1810, PreMutiny, Saharanpur collectorate, Judicial letters from government, 1810–1812, vol. 177, Regional State Archives, Allahabad (hereafter RAA).Google ScholarShakespear, J., SP, WP to Magistrates (nd) asking them to take measures to detect murders committed by ‘persons calling themselves Byragees who inveigle pilgrims and others and having administered narcotic drugs plunder and leave them on the high roads.’ Basta, series II, no. 28, 1812–1817, RAA.Google Scholar

¹³⁴ Smith, F. C., AGG, SNT to W. H. Macnaghten, Secy, 26 06 1833, Home Dept, T&D, List 1, Cons B.2.Google Scholar

¹³⁵ In a report of 7 August 1815 the Magistrate of Etawah had described the thugs of his district as of three classes, ‘entirely unconnected with each other’. Magt Etawah to Acting SP, WP, 7 Aug. 1815, Thornton, , illustrations, p. 321. In 1816 the government expressed its satisfaction over the success of the local arrangements made by the magistrates of Kanpur and Fatehpur in suppressing thuggee. Judl letter from Bengal, 2 Sep. 1817, PP, 1819, vol. 13, p. 754. The novelty of this attempt to co-ordinate police activity over an extensive area emerges from the fact that Sleeman in the 1830s had to make a special request to the Surveyor-General for a skeleton map of India with routes, halting posts, ferries, military establishments and jurisdictions, marked out on it.Google ScholarBruce, , The Stranglers, pp. 87–8.Google Scholar

¹³⁶ Sherwood, , Asiatick Researches, pp. 271–2. Extract political letter from Bengal, Pol. Cons, 24 July 1819, no. 46, BC F/4/744, 1824–25, IOL.Google Scholar Agent in Bundelkhand to Swinton, Secy, 28 02. 1824, extract Bengal Pol. Cons, 20 04 1924, BC F/4/984, 1828-29, IOL. However the insertion of a heading ‘murder by thugs’ in the police statements of the Western Provinces from about 1810 indicates the government's concern to have a regular estimate of the prevalence of this crime. But this category was not inserted in the police statements of the Lower Provinces.Google Scholar

¹³⁷ Ramaseeana, p. 18.The Marquess of Hastings reported that he had asked Sindhia to put down this ‘nefarious fraternity’, ibid.

¹³⁸ Deposition of Yerrogaudoo 2 Feb. 1811, sent by Magistrate, Chittoor, Ramaseeana, Appendix U, p. 325.

¹³⁹ Captain Richardson, D., ‘An Account of the Bazeegurs, a Sect Commonly Denominated Nuts’, Asiatick Researches, vol. VII, Article XIX (Calcutta, 1801), p. 465.Google Scholar

These wandering groups, he says, occasionally came under suspicion of criminal activities, ibid., 471–2.

¹⁴⁰ Sherwood, , Asiatick Researches, p. 265. But he also says it was used to check whether another traveller was of the same fraternity. The words he lists in his article suggest a slang rather than a language—there are words or phrases such as anyone might use in recounting a joke, or an anecdote, as, for instance, the use of the word shaic'h-ji for a Muslim, or the word nyamet, grace of god, for a promising target.Google Scholar

¹⁴¹ Cf. deposition of Imamee, 19 08. 1831, which suggests that individuals in one band came to recognize other bands operating on the same stretch of road and could drift from one band to another. Sleeman to Resident Nagpur, 17 10. 1830, Selections from the Nagpur Residency Records, vol. IV, 1818–1840 (Nagpur, 1954), pp. 270–4. Reynolds noted the keen interest taken by one gang in the progress of another gang and their readiness to supply information about their own movements. ‘Note on the T'hags’, p. 212.Google Scholar

¹⁴² Religious superstition, along with education into crime and habit were the foundation for the system of Phansigari according to Sherwood. The child was ‘instructed to hold his interests as opposed to that of society in general’. Sherwood, , 1816, Asiatick Researches, pp. 260, 268–9.Google Scholar

‘… they can rarely claim the benefit of even the palliating circumstances of strong pecuniary temptation…“Phansigari”, they observed … “is their business”, which, with reference to the tenets of fatalism, they conceive themselves to have been preordained to follow.’ Ibid.

¹⁴³ Ibid., pp. 280–1.

¹⁴⁴ Subsequently, officers gave strangling a ritualistic importance in ‘defining’ thuggee. Charles Hervey, ‘corrected’ Shakespear's early account for his statement that the thugs could use poison, the cord or the knife. ‘It being traditionally forbidden to Thugs to shed blood… as certain to bring them to discovery and condign punishment, with forfeiture of the protection of their tutelary deity Kalee, “the knife”, supposed in the above extract to be habitually used, was religiously shunned.’ Hervey, C., Some Records of Crime, vol. I (London, 1892), p. 72. Cf. extract Bengal Political Consultations, 24 July 1819, no. 46, BC F/4/774, 1824–1825, IOL, for a description by the Resident of Indore in 1819 of the thugs using a noose and a sword to kill their victims before robbing them.Google Scholar

¹⁴⁵ Cf.Sattin, A. (ed.), An Englishwoman in India. The Memoirs of Harriet Tytler 1828–1858 (Oxford University Press, 1986), pp. 24–5Google Scholar, also Dunbar, (ed.), Tigers, Durbars and Kings, p. 28.Google Scholar

¹⁴⁶ Swinton, G., Chief Secy, to Major Stewart, , Offg Resident, Indore, 23 10. 1829, Ramaseeana, Appendix X, pp. 379–84.Google Scholar

¹⁴⁷ Borthwick was instructed to call up each prisoner singly and to take the evidence of each of the five approvers to his identity and to the degree of his connection with the gang. If, on comparison, there was any doubt as to the prisoner being a member of the gang his case was to be reserved for further orders. Capital punishment was prescribed for the leaders and for the actual stranglers, transportation for life with hard labour for those who had decoyed travellers or helped to remove and conceal bodies. Holkar's government was to be informed before the passing of sentence, ibid., p. 381.

¹⁴⁸ G. Swinton to Resident Indore, 23 October 10. 1829, ibid., pp. 380–1.

¹⁴⁹ Smith, F. C. to Prinsep, H., Secy to GG in the Pol. Dept, no. 1866, 1 11. 1830, Mss Eur DI 188, pp. 78, 87, IOL.Google Scholar

¹⁵⁰ In the case of a gang arrested in January 1829 by Sleeman, whose murders had, with one exception, been committed in the Indian states of Bhopal and Gwalior, the Government again accepted that ‘for want of regular jurisdiction’ the trials could not be referred to the Judicial Department but could be conducted by the AGG of the Sagar and Narbada Territory on the same principle as the trial of the thugs caught by Borthwick. Swinton, G. W., Chief Secy Pol. Dept to F. C. Smith, AGG, SNT, 4 08. 1830, Selected Records, CP Secretariat, 1829–1832, Mss Eur Dl 188, IOL.Google Scholar

Cf. also F. C. Smith to H. Prinsep, Secy Pol. Dept, November. 1830 arguing along the same lines, ibid., pp. 77–8.

¹⁵¹ F. C. Smith to H. Prinsep, November. 1830, ibid., pp. 77–85.

¹⁵² Macnaghten, W. H., Secy to Swinton, O., Chief Secy, 25 June 1832, Mss Eur D1188, p. 147, IOL.Google Scholar

¹⁵³ Ramaseeana, Appendix A, n.

¹⁵⁴ Cavendish, R., Resident Gwalior to W. H. Macnaghten, 17 May 1832, Mss Eur D1188, pp. 145, 146Google Scholar,

IOL. A. Lockett, AGG, Rajputana Agency to W. H. Macnaghten, 23 07 1832, ibid.

¹⁵⁵ Lushington, G. T., Political agent, Bharatpur, toAGG, SNT, 13 06 1832Google Scholar and to Colonel Lockett, A., AGG, Ajmer, 06 1832, Mss Eur D1188, pp. 152–60, IOL.Google Scholar

¹⁵⁶ Smith, F. C. to Chief Secy, 20 06 1832, CLWCB, II, p. 842.Google Scholar

Cf. also Sleeman W. H. to Captain Benson on the prejudice of Hindus ‘common to all natives in a rude state of society, in surrendering a murderer who has once sought their protection’, 22 November. 1832, ibid., p. 948.

¹⁵⁷ Smith, F. C. to Swinton, G., 5 07 1830 in Bruce, , The Stranglers, p. 79. F. C. Smith to W. H. Macnaghten, 29 May 1832, Mss Eur D1188, p. 133, IOL.Google Scholar

¹⁵⁸ Letter from the Court of Directors, 28 Nov. 1832, 110. 11, para. 3, Home Dept 1833, T&D, Cons. B.2, no. 3.Google Scholar

¹⁵⁹ Agra Progs, 21 02. 1834, no. 14, Agra Narrative, 12. 1834–1835, UPSA.

¹⁶⁰ Macnaghten, W. H., Secy, Pol. Dept, to Smith, F. C., 7 Feb. 1835, 110. 272, Foreign Pol.5 03 1835, nos 167–8, NAI.Google Scholar

¹⁶¹ Captain Malcolm, an Assistant in the Nizam's territory, complained that even though some taluqdars were willing to assist, their authority did not reach to villages held on military and other rent free tenures. The Patels, headmen, of these villages would not attend to orders, or would shut the gates of the village against thug- pursuing parties. Captain Malcolm to Captain Reynolds, Supdt, Deccan, received by Sleeman, W. H., 23 Nov. 1840, inGoogle ScholarSleeman, W. H., Report on the Depredations Committed by the Thug Gangs of Upper and Central India, from the Cold Season of 1836–37, down to their Gradual Suppression, under the Operations of the Measures Adopted against them by the Supreme Government in the Year 1839 (Calcutta, 1840), p. xxi.Google Scholar

¹⁶² Foreign Political Progs, 23 Nov. 1840, nos 21–2, in Mukharya, P. S., The Administration of Lord Auckland in India, 1836–42 (Calcutta, 1979) (Bhats, bards).Google Scholar

¹⁶³ Sleeman, W. H. to Captain Graham, 8 02. Home Dept, T&D, Cons G.8, 07 1838–04 1839, letter 2505.Google ScholarCf. Taylor, Meadows, The Story of my Life (new edn, Edinburgh and London, 1882), p. 72 for a similar situation of ‘indiscipline’ within the Nizam' levies.Google Scholar

¹⁶⁴ It was only in 1835 when the Sagar and Narbada territories were merged into the Presidency of Agra that its revenue and judicial arrangements came under the supervision of the Board of Revenue and the Sadar Adalat.

¹⁶⁵ Macnaghten, W. H. Secy, to Low Resident, Lucknow, and Macnaghten to F. C. Smith, AGG, 23 02. 1838, J. paton, BM Addl Mss, 41300, pp. 352–3. Cf. Court of Directors to Bengal Government, India, pol. Dept, Misc. 21 02 1838, no. 13, pp. 974–8, expressing an unease that a political officer could inflict capital punishment without revision or appeal. BC 11/4/753, IOL.Google Scholar

¹⁶⁶ Sleeman, W. H. to Lumsden, J. G., Secy. Judl dept, Bombay, Nov. 1850, Home Dept, T&D, List 1, Cons B.2.Google Scholar

¹⁶⁷ Ramaseeana, Intro., p. 3.Google Scholar

¹⁶⁸ In Sleeman's subsequent publication, Report on Budhuck Decoits, Malchand, , a ‘Sansee dacoit’, refers to ramasi as slang, p. 271.Google Scholar

¹⁶⁹ Spry, H. H., ‘Some account of the gang-murderers of Central India commonly called thugs’, The Phrenological Journal and Miscellany, VIII (12. 1832–06 1834), pp. 511–30.Google ScholarCf.Adas, M., Machines as the Meausre of Men: Science, Technology and ideas of Western Dominance (Cornell University Press, 1990), pp. 292–6, for the influence of phrenology in the first half of the nineteenth century in confirming beliefs about innate differences between racial groups.Google Scholar

¹⁷⁰ Smith, F. C. to Chief Secy to Govt, 20 06 1832, CLWCB, II, p. 844.Google Scholar

¹⁷¹ The magistrate was not to commit for trial before the Court of Circuit or hold to security any person solely because of the accusation of confessing prisoners that they were thir accomplices, thout he could order further enquiry. CO, NA, 20 November 1815, p. 54. ‘Such rules’, commented Sleeman, were better suited to a ‘more advanced and more rational system of society.’ Ramaseena p. 54.

¹⁷² Ramaseeana, p. 52. Sleeman argued that a change was needed in the rules ‘that the testimony of any number of confessing prisoners shall not be considered a sufficient ground to authorise the detention of their associates.’Ramaseeana, pp. 51–6.

¹⁷³ F. C. Smith defended the use of general warrants with the argument that ‘the liberty of the subject must bend to a temporary suspension as the lesser evil of the two and therefore though the use of spies and general Warrants, will doubtless, occasionally create great evils … it must be submitted to, as the least of the evils attending such a depraved state of society as at present obtains in these provinces, and in general throughout the whole continent of India.’ Smith, F. C., AGG, SNT, to Swinton, G., Chief Secy, no. 908, 19 11. 1830, Mss Eur D1188, IOL, p. 71.Google Scholar

¹⁷⁴ Cf. Extract letter from Court of Directors, 28 11. 1832, no. 11, List 1, Cons B.2, NAI and letter from the Court of Directors, Pol. Dept, 15 July 1840, no. 26, expressing doubts about the practice of issuing general warrants; India and Bengal despatches, E/4/ 763, 10 01. 1840–1830 Nov. 1840, IOL; Cf. Commr Patna to Offg Magt, Patna, 11 07 1834, complaining of the extortion of a party sent out to arrest thugs with a general warrant. Home Dept, T&D, Cons B.2, no. 5.

¹⁷⁵ Smith, F. C., AGG, SNT, to Secy, Pol. Dept, 19 Nov. 1830, Mss Eur D1188, IOL. In some cases, approvers sent out with certificates identifying them and exempting them from the death penalty and transportation were found to be loaning them out to their friends for ‘bad purposes’.Google ScholarSleeman, W. H., circular 31 08. 1838, Home Dept, T&D, Cons G.8, 07 1838 April 1939.Google Scholar

¹⁷⁶ Smith, F. C., AGG, SNT, to Prinsep, Secy, 19 Nov. 1830, Mss Eur D1188, p. 90, IOL.Google Scholar

¹⁷⁷ Cf.Smith, F. C., AGG, SNT, to G. Swinton, Chief Secy, Pol. Dept, no. 1158, 26 05 1832, regarding the arrest of two artillery men in the service of the Rajah of Bejanur. He recommended that they should not be released for a long time, if ever, because their father was a convicted thug, and their uncle a notorious one whose two Sons had been punished for thuggee. Mss Eur D1188, IOL. Low, resident at Lucknow said he sought information of the family and marriage relationships of thugs as part of the collateral evidence which could be presented against a prisoner.Google ScholarLow, J. to Macnaghten, W. H., 1 Nov. 1838, J. Paton, BM, Addl Mss 41300, p. 348. W. H. Macnaghten to Resident, Hyderabad, 18 08. 1833, Home Dept, T&D, 1833, Cons D.1, no. 3, p. 264Google Scholar

¹⁷⁸ Smith, F. C. stressed the impossibility of reclaiming boys who were sons of thugs. Smith, F. C. to Prinsep, Secy, Judl Dept, 19 Nov. 1830, Mss Eur D1188, pp. 91–2, IOL. Some boys apprehended with a gang were kept in confinement for inability to provide ‘security for good behaviour’. Others were kept in confinement with their fathers who had turned approver and a thug ‘colony’ grew up around Jabbalpur and Lucknow.Google Scholar

¹⁷⁹ Swinton, , Chief Secy, to Resident Indore, 23 10. 1829, Ramaseeana, p. 381.Google Scholar

¹⁸⁰ Ibid., pp. 381–3. It was argued that thug approvers should not be pardoned on the same terms as other accomplices who turned ‘king's evidence’. Instead they should be drawn into service to detect thugs, and be kept under surveillance.

Smith, F. C. to Prinsep, , Secy, Judl Dept, 19 11. 1830, Mss Eur D1188, pp. 91–2, IOL.Google Scholar

¹⁸¹ Swinton, G., Chief Secy, to Smith, F. C., AGG, SNT, 2 04 1832, Home Dept, T&D, Cons D.1, no. 1, 1831.Google Scholar

Three prisoners whom F. C. Smith had sentenced to 14 years in fetters with stripes and hard labour and three to whom he had given 7 years, on the grounds that they were proved to be notorious thugs and present at murders though not proved to be principals, were now given transportation for life. Ibid.

¹⁸² Smith, F. C. to Swinton, G., No. 888, 8 May 1832, Mss Eur D1188, IOL, p. 127 (emphasis added).Google Scholar

¹⁸³ However, no mention was made of fixing a period for judicial review. Cf. G. Swinton, Chief Secy, to Major Low, Resident Gwalior, on the trial proceedings held by Captain Dyke. Government concurred that there was ample evidence to conclude that Drigpal and Ramchund were ‘professional thugs of such dangerous character that it would be dangerous to release them.’ They were to be confined until government was satisfied that they could be released without danger to the community. Mss Eur D1188, IOL, p. 114.

¹⁸⁴ Macnaghten, W. H., Secy to Govt, to Smith, F. C., AGG, SNT, 1 11. 1833, Home Dept, T&D, Cons D.1, no. 4, 1833.Google Scholar

¹⁸⁵ Smith, F. C. to Chief Secy, 20 June 1832, CLWCB, II, p. 844.Google Scholar

¹⁸⁶ Smith, F. C. to Chief Secy, 20 June 1832, CLWCB, II, p. 845. Cf. also F. C. Smith to Prinsep. Secy, 19 11. 1830, Mss Eur D1188, IOL, pp. 77–45. The government's eagerness to highlight both the evil of the crime and its mastery over it is illustrated by another penal provision. The punishment of branding had been abolished for prisoners sentenced to temporary imprisonment. However thug- prisoners sentenced to limited terms were to have the words ‘convicted thug’ tattoed on their faces, a deviation, commented Chief Secretary Swinton, which was ‘fully warranted by the enormity of the crime of Thuggee which justly placed those who practised it beyond the pale of the Social Law.’Google ScholarSwinton, G. W., Chief Secy to Smith, F. C., 4 Aug. 1830, Mss. Eur D1188, IOL.Google Scholar

¹⁸⁷ Smith, F. C. to Macnaghten, W. H., Secy, 26 June 1833, Home Dept, 1833, T&D Cons B.2, no. 4.Google Scholar

¹⁸⁸ Between 1830 and 18 July 1832 there were 146 executions of thugs atJabbalpur and Sagar. Spry, H. H., Modern India, vol. I (London, 1837), p. 168.Google Scholar

¹⁸⁹ The figures of capital punishment in the Company's dominions were cited to the Select Committee in 1831 to illustrate the ‘mild’ nature of criminal justice in India as compared with the harsher code of England. PP 1831–1832, vol. 12, pp. 208–9.

¹⁹⁰ Cf. Singha, ‘A “Despotism of Law”’, pp. 193–9.

¹⁹¹ Cf. T. W. Laquer for a brilliant examination of the public execution as a theatre of fluidity, and a critique of a view of the execution as ‘semiotically stable and relatively closed’. Laquer, T. W., ‘Crowds, Carnival and the State in English Executions, 1604–1868’, in Beier, A. L., Cannadine, D. and Rosenheim, J. M. (eds), The First Modern Society; Essays in English Histoy in Honour of Lawrence Stone (Cambridge,1989), pp. 305–6.Google Scholar

¹⁹² Spry, H. H., the medical officer at Sagar gave a vivid description of ‘a gang of condemned thugs who passed their last night in displays of coarse and disgusting levity’ and chose to test their own ropes and swing themselves off. Modern India, vol. I, pp. 165–6. Sleeman allowed an incision to be made behind the ankles of the executed men at the request of Indian spectators who wanted to prevent the return of their spirits.Google ScholarSleeman, W. H. to Smith, F. C., 1832, Home Dept, pol. Cons G.1.Google Scholar

¹⁹³ Mcleod, D. F. to Smith, F. C., 10 Oct 1834, Foreign Dept, pol Cons 11 May 1855 no. 78 para. 36, NAI.Google Scholar

He argued against sentencing thugs to capital punishment on the grounds that it went against the ‘sense’ of the community, Ibid. The Resident of Lucknow also advocated transportation rather than capital punishment because the Awadh government, he said very rarely inflicted capital punishment.

Low, J., Resident, Lucknow to Secy, Govt, 1 11., J. Paton Addl Ms 41300, pp. 338–51, BM. There is also some indication that such exhibitions were making the approvers rather too nervous about their own fate.Google Scholar

¹⁹⁴ Macnaghten, W. H., Secy, to Lt Col. Stewart, , Resident Hyderabad, 18 Aug. 1833, Home Dept, T&D, Cons D.1, no. 3, 1833, pp. 204–68.Google Scholar

Prisoners No. 3 of trial 1, No. 2 of trial 2, No. of trial, and No. 28 of trial 7 had been sentenced to hanging. The Governor General in Council held that there was strong circumstantial evidence of each being a ‘thug by profession’, but as there was ‘no direct evidence beyond that of the approvers of his having participated in any of the murders’ the sentence was to be commuted to life imprisonment with branding as a thug on the forehead. ‘It will be observed’, wrote the Secretary, ‘that all the individuals convicted have been sentenced to the same punishment namely imprisonment for life in the Company's territories with branding and hard labour, the only ground for making a distinction in the sentences being a more or less active part taken by them in the Commission of murders, but the means of discriminating as to their degree of guilt in this particular depends solely on the evidence, not always consistent, of approvers.’ Ibid. The Court of Directors approved the scaling down of the death sentence in the 1833 trials at Sagar. Letter from Court of Directors, 16 April 1834, no. 8, Home Dept, 1833, T&D, Cons B.2, no. 6.

¹⁹⁵ on the ‘Amurpatan’ trials at Sagar government commened that it would have rejected the uncorrborated evidence of approvers but for the precautions taken to give value before the apprehension of an accomplice with what was ascertained thereafter. Macnaghten, W. H., Secy, to Agg, SNT, 7 Nov. 1833, paras 38–42, Home Dept, T&D 1833, Cons D.1, no. 4.Google Scholar

¹⁹⁶ Extract letter from Court of Directors,28 Nov. 1832, no. 11, home Dept, T&D, List 1, Cons B.2, Sl. no. 3, 1833. They also asked that to be thugs should be very sparingly used. Ibid.

¹⁹⁷ Cf.Beames, J., Memoirs of a Bengal Civilian (Chatto and Windus, 1961), pp. 125–6 for bitter complaints against ‘military interlopers’ who stopped promotions. I owe the suggestion about possibilities of bureaucratic aggrandisement influencing the thuggee campaign to Dr Sumit Guha.Google Scholar

¹⁹⁸ Sleeman, W. H. to Captain Benson, , 22 Nov. 1832, CLWCB, II, p. 947.Google Scholar

F. C. Smith to Chief Secy, 20 July, 1832, ibid., p. 839.

¹⁹⁹ Smith, F. C. to Macnaghten, W. H., Secy, 26 June 1833, Home Dept, 1833, T&D, Cons B.2.Google Scholar

²⁰⁰ Smith, F. C., AGG, SNT to Macnaghten, W. H., 26 June 1833, Home Dept, T&D, Cons B.2, no. 4.Google Scholar

²⁰¹ Ibid. Sleeman suggested a special Commissioner of police in the Western Provinces with ‘paramount authority over all magistrates and other judicial authorities in what May properly be termed international police’, to be vested with authority to try all the thugs seized here and in the territory of the native princes, and answerable only to the Governor-General in the discharge of his duties.

Sleeman, W. H. to Captain Benson, , 22 Nov. 1832, CLWCB, II, pp. 949–50. Sleeman was suggesting a unification of executive and judicial powers as in the administrative structure of the non-regulation provinces. F. J. Shore, another commissioner of the Sagar and Narbada territory, also recommended the special appointment of officers to hold thug trials directly under the review of Government, instead of under the review of the Nizamat Adalat.Google Scholar

²⁰² Smith, F. C. to Macnaghten, W. H., 26 June 1833, para. 7, Home Dept, 1833, T&D, Cons B.2, no. 4.Google Scholar

²⁰³ Ramaseeana, Appendix A, Cf. also Sleeman, W. H. to Lumsden, J. G., Secy, Judl Dept, Bombay, 1 Nov. 1850, Home Dept, T&D, Cons. B.2, pp. 8–9.Google Scholar

²⁰⁴ It is worth noting the careful phrasing of Auckland's assurance to the court of Directors that the proceedings of the magistrates, whether of the Civil Service or not, ‘in our districts’ were ‘properly reconcilable to the principles of Criminal justice’. Minute by Governor-General Auckland, 7 Dec. 1840, General Dept, Minute Book, vol. V, BM AddI Ms 37, 712 (emphasis added).

²⁰⁵ Cf. CO, NA, no. 11, 1 June 1838, p. 224.

²⁰⁶ Assistant General Superintendents (hereafter Asst GS) for the suppression of thuggee were given powers of joint magistrate over the regulation districts under their survey so that they could commit prisoners to trial. Act XIX of 1837 gave further flexibility by enacting that ‘any person charged with murder by Thuggee, or with the offence of having belonged to a gang of thugs, made punishable by Act XXX of 1836, May be committed by any Magistrate or Joint Magistrate within the Territories of the East India Company, for trial before any Criminal Court, competent to try such person on such charge.’

²⁰⁷ Cf.Singha, , ‘A “despotism of law”’, pp. 38–9, 77–83.Google Scholar

²⁰⁸ Cf. Reg. 53, S. 4, cl, 1803 in which persons convicted of going forth with a gang of robbers to commit dacoity but apprehended before they had committed it could be sentenced to imprisonment with hard labour for a period of up to 7 years. Reg. 1 s. 6, 1811, laid down that a person found with a seend katee (an iron instrument) used for nuccubzunnee (digging holes in the walls of houses to effect entry) on his person was to be detained by the magistrate and put to work on the public roads till he gave security for future good conduct or until the Court of Circuit discharged him on a mochulka, undertaking.

²⁰⁹ The punishment for a single offence of dacoity unaccompanied by homicide, personal injury or other aggravating circumstances was fourteen years’ imprisonment with hard labour, but if convicted of a repetition of such offence the sentence was imprisonment for life, or transportation for life, Reg. 53, s. 4, cl. 4, 1803.

²¹⁰ The outlining of such professions in criminal justice is a fascinating index of certain preoccupations and features of colonial rule, such as the policing of particular professions, the greater importance of documents in the proof of certain claims, and the control of coinage. Cf.Styles, J., ‘Our Traitorous Money-makers: The Yorkshire Coiners and the Law, 1760–83;’, in Brewer, J. and Styles, J., An Ungovernable People: The English and their Law in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (London, 1980), for innovative work on similar themes.Google Scholar

²¹¹ By Act XVIII of 1843 the Company also assumed the right to take over ‘persons sentenced to imprisonment or transportation for the offences of Thuggee, Dacoity, or the offences of belonging to any gang of Thugs, or Dacoits, within the Territories of any Native Prince or State in alliance with the said Company.’ The Act justified this measure on the ground that these gangs committed offences in British territory as well as outside, and that this provision would ensure custody for such criminals.

²¹² See footnote 206.

²¹³ Sleeman conceded that to prove that a prisoner belonged to a gang of thugs or dacoits it was necessary to show that the gang to which he belonged actually committed a dacoity or thuggee, ‘but it has not been deemed necessary to prove, excepting by the evidence of accomplices, that he took any prominent part or any part at all in the particular Dacoitee or Thuggee so proved to have been committed by the Gang.’ Sleeman, W. H. to Lumsden, J. G., Secy, Judl Dept, Bombay, 1 Nov. 1850, Home Dept, T&D, List 1, Cons B.2, p. 10.Google Scholar

²¹⁴ Sleeman, W. H. to Lt Sleeman, J., 19 April 1838, Home Dept, T&D, Cons G.5, Sep. 1836–02. 1839.Google Scholar

²¹⁵ Note by Shakespear, H., 20 April 1837, on draft of an Act submitted by the Madras Goverment on the and evidence of thugs.Google Scholar Law progs, William, Fort, 19 June 1837 June 1837 p. 370, IOL.Google Scholar

²¹⁶ Minute by Hon. Macaulay, T. B., 5 June 1837Google Scholar, law Progs, William, Fort, Jan 1837, 05–June 1837 pp. 374–5, NAI. Government reiterated this principle in rejecting a request to dispence with the summoning of witnesses from distant places to be cross-examined before prisoners on certain statements of fact. It had been suggested that a depositian sworn before the local magistrate could be accepted.Google ScholarRavenshaw, F. C., Sessions Judge (hereafter SJ), Patna, to Regr, NA, 16 05 1837 and A. Lowis, Asst GS, to Ravenshaw, SJ, 6 05 1837, Legislative Dept Progs, 19 06 1837, Nos 11–12, Law Progs, 05–06 1837, NAI. However, Government held that it was up to the Nizamat Adalat to define what evidence was sufficient to convict an individual of the offence. ‘It would be obviously objectionable to adopt the principle that evidence which would be deemed insufficient for any other Offenders should be deemed sufficient for the conviction of Thugs.’Google ScholarMacnaghten, W. H., Secy to Govt, to R. D. Mangles, Secy to Govt of Bengal, 19 06 1837, Legislative Dept, 19 06 1837, no. 18, Law Progs, 05–06 1837, NAI.Google Scholar

²¹⁷ For instance, there was a controversy in 1850 between the thuggee department and the Judges of the Bombay Presidency for their alleged distrust of approver's testimony. The Sessions Judge of Dharwar pointed out that the Judge had to exercise the same caution in such cases where the evidence was only the statement of convicted approvers as he would in an ‘ordinary’ case of gang robbery. The protection of forms of procedure had to be maintained in all cases. Cf. Home Dept, 1850, T&D, Cons B.2, no. 24, and Remington, A., SJ, Dharwar, to Regr, Sadar Faujdari Adalat, Bombay, 1 May 1851, Home Dept, 1854, T&D, Cons B.1, no. 6. Cf. also Home Dept, 1859, T&D, Cons B.2, no. 27, for a long controversy between Hume, Magt Etawah, and Major C. Hervey, Offg Geni Supdt, on the reliability of the approver's evidence presented by the T&D Department.Google Scholar

²¹⁸ Instructions with reference to Acts XVIII and XIX of 1837 by the GG in C, Legislative Dept, 19 June 1837, no. 16, Law progs, May–June 1837, NAI. ‘Nothing short of a sentence pronounced by a Court of Justice and recorded on the Proceedings of that Court can be sufficient ground for detaining any person in perpetual imprisonment.’ Ibid.

²¹⁹ Ibid.

²²⁰ Cf.Ramaseeana, pp. 38–9, table showing number of acquittals to commitments.Google Scholar Also figures of acquittals to commitments given by Hutton, J., A Popular Account of the Thug and Dacoit (1857)Google Scholar, in Sleeman, J. L., Thug or a Million Murders, p. 238.Google Scholar

²²¹ Sleeman, W. H., to Torrins, H., Dept, Secy, 20 Dec. 1838, letter No. 2259, Home Dept, T&D, Cons G.9, 07 1838–04 1839.Google Scholar

²²² Cf., W. H. to Macnaghten, W. H., 8 Sept. 1836, promising thuggee could be suppressed in every part of India in three years, if the regulations were altered, extra police sanctioned and efficient European officers appointed. Home Dept, T&D, G.4 09. 1836–03 1838, pp. 30–1.Google Scholar

²²³ Sleeman, W. H. to Torrins, H., Dept, Secy, 20 Dec. 1838, Home, T&D, Cons G.9, 07 1838–04 1839, NAI.Google Scholar Also Sleeman, W. H., Report on the Depredations Committed by the Thug Gangs, 1840, intro., p. XIX. In 07 1840 the government informed the Court of Directors that as organized associations thug bands had been broken up.Google Scholar

²²⁴ Reynolds, , Offg GS to Baber, T. H., Pol. Agent, Dharwar, 31 Dec. 1836, Home Dept, T&D, 12. 1836–05 1837.Google Scholar

²²⁵ Sleeman, W. H. to Lt Birch, 27 Dec. 1837, Home Dept, T&D, G.4 09. 1836– 03 1838, and Sleeman, W. H. to Lt Burrows, Asst OS, Dharwar, 27 03 1838, Home Dept, T&D, Cons G.5, Sept. 1836–02. 1839.Google Scholar

²²⁶ Sleeman, W. H. to Lt. Burrows, , 17 Dec. 1837, Home Dept, T&D, G.4, Sept. 1836– 1838, p. 83.Google Scholar

²²⁷ Capt. Vallancy, J. to Sleeman, W. H., 14 Oct. 1839, Sleeman, W. H. to Maddock, T. H., Secy, Pol. Dept, 26 Nov 1839, Foreign Pol., 22 Jan. 1840, no. 78, pp. 408–10, NAI.Google Scholar

²²⁸ Sleeman, W. H. to Macnaghten, W. H., Secy, Govt of India, Feb. 1838, Home Dept, T&D, Cons G.5, Sep. 1836–02. 1839, P 107.Google Scholar

²²⁹ Ibid.

²³⁰ For details of this fiasco cf. W. H. Sleeman to Lt Burrows, Asst GS, 27 April 1838, W. H. Sleeman to Capt. P. A. Reynolds, 6 April 1838, Home Dept, T&D, Cons G.5, 09. 1836–02. 1839; W. H. Sleeman to Capt. Reynolds 18 July 1838, letter 1186, Home Dept, T&D, Cons G.8, 07 1838–04 1839; W. H. Sleeman to Lt Lumley, 30 July 1838, letter 1242, ibid.

²³¹ Sleeman, W. H. to Capt. Malcolm, , Extra Asst GS, 31 March 1838, Home Dept, T&D, Cons G.5, 09. 1836–Feb. 1839.Google Scholar

²³² W. H. Sleeman to Capt. P. A. Reynolds, 6 April 1838, ibid., pp. 112–14.

²³³ Sleeman, W. H. to Capt. Malcolm, , 22 Aug. 1838, letter 1432, Home Dept, T&D, Cons G.8, 07 1838–04 1839.Google Scholar

Comparing the approvers from these gangs to those from the ‘old hereditary Thug associations in the Dukhun and Hindustan’, Sleeman said that they had failed to give convincing evidence, ibid.

²³⁴ Sleeman, W. H. to Lt.Birch, W. O., Asst GS, Bombay, 5 July 1838, Home Dept, T&D, Cons G.5, 09. 1836–02. 1839, p. 216.Google Scholar

Also W. H. Sleeman to Capt. Burrows, 18 January. 1839, ibid., p. 337.

²³⁵ Sleeman, W. H. to Lt Birch, , 4 April 1839, letter 2747, Home Dept, T&D, Cons G.8, 07 1838–04 1839. Similarly, in the case of the wandering Banjaras Sleeman said that though they occasionally murdered travellers, only those should be apprehended who were implicated in a particular crime.Google Scholar

W. H. Sleeman to Capt. Reynolds, 21 January. 1839, ibid. Cf. also W. H. Sleeman to Offg Secy, Govt of India, 30 September. 1840, saying that it was better to leave Jogi vagrants and gangs of poisoners to the local Magistrate. Home Dept, T&D, Cons G.11, 04 1840–March 1841.

²³⁶ Captain Malcolm, was urged to take any opportunity to convict some of the Jogis who had been arrested in the local courts so that people would become aware of their ‘atrocious characters’. W. H. Sleeman to Capt. Malcolm, 22 Aug. 1838, Home Dept, T&D, G.8, 07 1838–04 1839.Google Scholar

²³⁷ If a few Banjaras could be convicted for thuggee, he wrote, then the Magistrates could be persuaded to this. W. H. Sleeman to Capt. Reynolds, 21 January. 1839, ibid.

²³⁸ Rambles and Recollections, pp. 592–3, n. 2.Google Scholar

²³⁹ Sleeman had pressed for an alteration in the regulations on the argument that an initiated thug would always return to his trade. Therefore a prisoner shown to be a thug ‘by profession’ ought to be imprisoned for life. Sleeman, W. H. to W. H. Macnaghten, 8 Sept. 1836, Home Dept, T&D, Cons G.4, Sept. 1836–03 1838, pp. 15–20.Google Scholar ‘It must be borne in mind’, wrote Smith, F. C., ‘that a Thug cannot possibly be guilty of a Solitary crime, but of numbers, because Thuggee is a profession for life and not a casual mode ‘of] obtaining a livelihood’. F. C. Smith, nd, Legislative Dept, 19 June 1837, no. 10, Law Progs, 05–06 1837, NAI.Google Scholar

²⁴⁰ In 1839, when asked what was to be done with prisoners who had perhaps engaged in thuggee only on a single occasion, the Officiating General Superintendent, Reynolds, was ‘rather sceptical on the subject of casual Thuggee on the part of hereditary members of this class of criminals. Reynolds, to Lt Briggs, W. T., 20 Dec. 1836, Letter 1423, Home Dept, T&D, Cons G.6, 12. 1836–05 1837.Google Scholar

And yet a few days later he was writing that bird catchers and bear and monkey entertainers ‘are in the habit of practising Thuggee on a small scale.’ Reynolds to T. H. Baber, Pol. Agent Dharwar, 31 December. 1836, Letter 1490, ibid.

²⁴¹ Sleeman, W. H. to Torrins, H., Dept Secy, 20 Dec. 1838, Home Dept, T&D, Cons G.9, July 1838–04 1939. Writing to Paton on 26 Jan. 1840, Sleeman claimed that though many of the Jumaldhee Thugs were at large, they did not anywhere carry on their trade of murder; Report on Budhuk Deco its, p. 202.Google Scholar Also, Report on the Depredations Committed by Thug Gangs, 1840, p. xix.Google Scholar

²⁴² Sleeman coined a phrase for a ‘new’ type of thuggee, ‘Megpunnaism’–the murder of indigent parents for their children. The government had turned down Sleeman's suggestion for trying ‘Megpunnaism’ in the Upper Doab, under a special judge. It held that the crime differed from ordinary thuggee only in the species of gain. Offg Secy, Govt of India, to Sleeman, W. H., 17 Jan. 1839, Home Dept, 1839, T&D, Cons B.2, no. 16.Google Scholar

²⁴³ Cf.Sleeman, , Thug or a Million Murders, pp. 194–6. The thuggee provision was also used to deal with the law and order problems created by mercenaries displaced by the annexation of Punjab.Google ScholarCf.Campbell, G., Modern India: A Sketch of the System of Civil Government (London, 1852), pp. 517–19.Google Scholar

²⁴⁴ Sleeman argued that because poisoners operated in smaller bands, it was difficult to compare the evidence of approvers, or to induce prisoners to turn approver on the promise of that limited pardon which was held out to thug approvers. Cf.Sleeman, W. H. to Offg Secy to Govt of India, 30 Sept 1840, Home Dept, T&D, Cons G.11, April 1840–March 1841. Also Rambles and Recollections, 1844.Google Scholar

²⁴⁵ Sleeman, W. H. to Elliot, H. M., Secy, Govt of India, Foreign Dept, no. 24, 24 June 1847, NAI. But the term ‘thug’ had to be redefined in order to make the term applicable to the case. Cf. Act III of 1848.Google Scholar

²⁴⁶ The preamble to Act III of 1848 stated that doubts had arisen as to the meaning of the words ‘Thug’, ‘Thuggee’ and ‘Murder by Thuggee’ when used in the Acts of the Council of India.

²⁴⁷ The means used were defined by Act III of 1848 as thouse intended or known to be likely to casue dearh. Cf.Sleeman, , Report on Budhuk Decoits p. 3.Google Scholar

²⁴⁸ Cf. Col. Hervey, C.Report on the Crime of Thuggee by Means of Poison in British Territory in the years 1864, 1865 and 1866 (Delhi, General Superintendents's Press, 1868), p. 3Google Scholar and Some Records of Crime, pp. 22–3, where presses for cognizance of ‘Thuggee by means of poision’.Google Scholar

²⁴⁹ See above, fn. 35.

²⁵⁰ Cf. Radhakrishna, , ‘The Criminal Tribes Act in Madras Presidency’, pp. 283–7, for the latter.Google Scholar

²⁵¹ Gordon, , ‘Scarf and Sword’, p. 410; Bruse, The Stranglers, p. 3, 27, 42;Google ScholarHjejle, B., ‘The Social Policy of the East India Company with Regard to Sati, Slavery, Thagi and Infanticide, 1772–1858’. D.Phil., Oxford, 1958.Google Scholar

²⁵² Some of the prisoners swept up for thuggee boasted of their access to magical power to discourage retributive action from rulers and chiefs. Cf.Ramaseeana, p. 155. ‘A vulgar idea prevails’, reported a magistrate in 1810, ‘that the Thugs have recourse to sorcery to assist them in encompassing their hellish purposes’. Actg Asst Magt Farukhabad, 12 March 1810, Saharanpur Collectorate, Judl letters from Govt, 1810–1812, vol. 177, RAA. But even James Paton, a thuggee officer of ardent Evangelical views had to acknowledge that there were no ‘direct or express’ religious or superstitious motives for the toleration which Indians seemed to extend to known thugs in their midst.Google ScholarPaton, J., BM AddI Mss 41300, pp. 173–4.Google Scholar

²⁵³ Trevelyan, C. E., ‘The Thugs or Secret Murderers of India’, The Edinburgh Review, vol. LXIX (Edinburgh, 1837), pp. 357–95.Google Scholar

²⁵⁴ Ibid. James Paton, a thuggee assistant, also suggested that the children of thugs be drawn from their villages so as to ‘engraft’ upon them ‘the delightful fruits' of Christian instruction and virtue’.

Paton, J. to Sleeman, W. H., 5 Jan. 1838, Home Dept, T&D, Cons B.2, no. 10.Google Scholar

²⁵⁵ W. H. Sleeman to Capt. Reynolds, 22 February. 1839, letter 2569, Home Dept, T&D, Cons G.8, July 1838–April 1839. Cf. also W. H. Sleeman to Mills, 23 February. 1839, letter 2574, ibid, advocating a similar policy.

²⁵⁶ Sleeman's attitude contrasts with that of Mcleod, another officer of the department, who wanted the Jabbalpur experiment to be expanded. ‘It May be argued that it is only the Peculiarity of the System followed for the Suppression of Thuggee which has brought their families within our Controls. But the same controls May be extended to every class of persons matured in crime.’ Extract from McLeod's police report on the SNT, paras 32–3, April 1841, Foreign Dept, Pol. (A), 1841, 26 July 1841, no. 74, NAI.

²⁵⁷ Under pressure of pursuit, wrote Sleeman in his 1840 report, the sons of thugs would take to honest industry. Report on the Depredations Committed by Thug Gangs, p. xi.Google Scholar

²⁵⁸ Sleeman, W. H. to Maddock, L. H., Secy, 26 Feb. 1839, Home Dept, T&D, Cons G.8, July 1838–April 1839.Google Scholar

²⁵⁹ W. H. Sleeman to L. H. Maddock, Secy, 13 March 1839, ibid.

²⁶⁰ Cf. Nigam, ‘A Social History of a Colonial Stereotype’.

²⁶¹ Sleeman, W. H. to Hamilton, , Secy, Govt of NWP, 29 April 1843, COG, Basta 18, vol. 131, Gorakhpur, Judl, RAA. W. H. Sleeman, Commr for suppression of Dacoity to H. E. Tucker, Offg Magt, Gorakhpur, 27 May 1845, Gorakhpur Collectorate, Pre-Mutiny, letters received from the GS, T&D, 1844–1856, Basta 13, vol. 97, RAA.Google ScholarPaton, J., Asst Resident, Lucknow for an argument in favour of locating them on wasteland. J. Paton, Addl Ms 41300, p. 408, pp. 417–20. Memo by J. Paton, for Colonel Caulfield, Actg Resident, Lucknow, 25 Jan.1840 Foreign Dept, Pol. (A), 9 March 1840, no. 122, NAI.Google Scholar

²⁶² Kaye, , Administration the East India Company, p. 376.Google Scholar