Kim A. Wagner

The Deconstructed Stranglers: A Reassessment of Thuggee

Maunsell, a lieutenant in the 23rd Native Infantry of the Bengal Army set out on horseback in October 1812 from Agra, in what were then called the North-western Provinces, on a visit of inspection to Etawah, seventy-five miles south-east, accompanied by two sepoy orderlies and a horse carrying his belongings and equipment. All three were armed, Maunsell with sword and holster pistols, the sepoys with the Brown Bess musket and bayonet.

THUGGEE AND SOCIAL BANDITRY RECONSIDERED

Eric Hobsbawms concept of ‘social banditry’, as presented in Bandits of 1969, is probably the single most influential idea in the modern study of bandits and outlaws. Key to Hobsbawms argument is the assumption of a more or less direct relation between ‘a bandits real behaviour and his subsequent myth’ – in other words, that the popular perception of bandits reflected the social reality of banditry, and that accordingly the Robin Hood myth had some basis in historical events. This article seeks to qualify some of the basic premises of Eric Hobsbawms concept of social banditry by examining the context and process by which popular and official knowledge of banditry emerged. This analysis is based on a case-study of the thugs of early nineteenth-century colonial India. Though seldom described as such, thuggee is one of the best-documented instances of banditry historically speaking. This makes the findings and theoretical considerations made in connection with thuggee pertinent to banditry worldwide and during various periods. By focusing on issues of methodology it is hoped that a critical discussion of Hobsbawms model, rather than just being a polemic deconstruction, may suggest a new approach to the study of banditry more generally.

Introduction: Engaging Colonial Knowledge

In the long history of European overseas expansion, an immense and diverse collection of texts, images, drawings, and maps has been produced and accumulated, part of which survives today in archives and libraries around the world. As a legacy of colonization and empirebuilding, the ‘knowledge’ embodied in this diverse material has been identified with projects of imperialist or colonialist domination, and as such simply labelled as ‘colonial’. This designation, however, hides considerable complexity. As we enter these archives, we enter a heterogeneous documental world, spanning distinct languages, literary and artistic genres or conventions, historical moments, geographical settings, varied human purposes and agendas. Along the way a proliferation of subjects, objects, categories, stories, events, personal and collective dramas, either experienced or imagined, is brought into being. This is not a neat and orderly world infused with transparent and unambiguous meaning. It constitutes a tensional, discontinuous, and uncertain formation of documents, categories, stories, and images. In their very dispersion and unevenness, these may be seen, as Michel Foucault observed, as productive political ‘fields of force’ that selectively make

Recruiting the ‘martial races’: identities and military service in colonial India

ABSTRACT British rule in India was entirely reliant on local troops, and the mobilization and recruitment of Indian communities gave rise to a multiplicity of discourses, traditions and identities reflecting the peculiar relationship between colonial power and indigenous military labour. Through the late nineteenth century, these discourses became increasingly racialized: only certain native communities were deemed to possess the ‘spirit’ necessary for military service. These so-called ‘martial races’—including Nepalese Gurkhas, Punjabi Sikhs and Muslims from the northern and frontier provinces—provided the backbone of the imperial military and played a vital role in defending and extending colonial authority. By the early twentieth century, the racialized nature of soldiering in India was invoked to explain the composition of imperial forces and to legitimize the preservation of colonial rule. While the theory of ‘martial races’ is the subject of an increasingly diverse literature, relatively little attention has been paid to the practice—and practical origins—of restricted recruitment. In this article Rand and Wagner seek to re-examine the role of martial-race theories in British recruitment policies and practices in colonial India, drawing attention to the incoherence and complexity that marked the relationship between ideas of race and the practicalities of colonial military administration. They focus in particular on long-term patterns of continuities, rather than neat periodizations, and suggest that racialized discourses regarding soldiering have to be considered within the context of mutually advantageous relationships between the colonial state and its indigenous allies.

‘In Unrestrained Conversation’: Approvers and the Colonial Ethnography of Crime in Nineteenth-Century India

With these lines, the British officer, Captain James Paton, introduced the interviews he conducted with captured Thugs at Lucknow in northern India in 1836, emphasizing the spontaneity of the exchange and authenticity of the responses. The British believed the Thugs to be a sect of prolific murderers who operated in secret along the highways of the subcontinent, guided by a deadly devotion to Hindu goddess-worship. Ostensibly, the purpose of Paton’s conversations was merely to demonstrate the ‘diabolical nature’ of the practice of Thuggee and of the Thugs themselves. Such revelations, however, implicitly provided justification for British rule in India, and the ability of colonial officers to penetrate the secrets of the Indian underworld was regarded as the finest validation of their complete knowledge of the land. From the 1830s onwards, colonial rule in India was in fact precipitated upon the gathering of information about its peoples and customs. For John Kaye, the in-house historian of the East India Company, the discovery and suppression of Thuggee thus constituted indisputable proof that British rule in India had progressed from the non-intervention policies of a disinterested armchair administration: