The real Thugs of India and their (unfortunate) legacy
The upcoming Bollywood magnum-opus “Thugs of Hindostan” warrants a glimpse at history of thugs and their footprints today.
The trailer for the biggest Bollywood blockbuster of 2018 “Thugs of Hindostan” is out. The movie is set in the year 1795, with themes of azadi (freedom), dhokha (treachery) and bharosa (trust) visible in the trailer. The context of the movie necessitates a small walkthrough of history. Thugs have bearing not only on the mentioned movie, but also on the contemporary Indian society. So,
Who were the thugs?
Thugs (or Thuggee) were organised gangs of professional robbers and murderers. A desi combination of Mafia and Ninja, they operated predominantly in the late 18th century and early 19th century. They came from diverse social backgrounds- Hindus and Muslims alike. They were a secret mystical cult which often worshipped goddess Kali (or Bhawani). [Remember Mola Ram (Amrish Puri) from Indiana Jones: Temple of Doom or Captain Nemo (Naseeruddin Shah) from League of Extraordinary Gentlemen?
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Exact origin of thugs is hard to locate. They have been in the Indian-subcontinent for quite a long time. Jalaluddin Khilji in late 13th century is said to have deported several hundreds of thugs to Bengal in order to keep Delhi clean. Some even trace thugs back to around 630 CE, when the Chinese pilgrim Xuanzang (or Hsuan Tsang, as in our old school history textbooks) was looted several times by similar band of dacoits. However, they came into prominence from the later half of 18th century.
Thugs operated on highways (the then highways) - robbing, tricking and later strangling their victims. They would join travellers, gain their confidence and with an element of surprise, strangle their victims with a handkerchief or noose. Hence the name Thug (ठग, deceiver) or Phansigar (फांसी, noose).
The rise and fall of Thuggee
Thugee might have started as a quick solution to hunger and poverty, later became more of a profession and social stature. Membership and leadership became hereditary, soon the group evolved into a criminal tribe. In one cluster of Thuggee groups, leadership was traced along family lines for as back as eight generations. The captain of a group of thugs was called Jemadar (or jamadar).
There is a mention of thugs in the 1979 edition of Guinness World Records (then known as Guinness Book of World Records). It is for the category of “Most Prolific Murderers” (yes, you read it correct). An estimated 2 million assassinations in a span of 300 years were attributed to thugs. The book also finds a special mention of one Behram Thug, who has 931 kills associated with his name!
One thing that needs to be clarified here is that thugs are different from Pindaris (Pendhari), who were similar bands of dacoits during the same time period. Pindaris were overt operators. They used to plunder and loot villages, usually under the orders of Maratha army. It was Governor General Lord Hastings who is attributed with elimination of Pindaris during the Third Anglo-Maratha War (1818).
The thugs became a major obstacle for British East India Company’s (EIC) interests in India. It used to be a nightmare carrying treasury along the North Indian doab region. (Thugs swinging aboard EIC’s ships and performing Pirates of Caribbean on-board is unlikely though). Indian sepoys in British army used to be a major target, especially after the sepoys got their salaries.
Governor General William Bentick (1828-35), well known for several social reforms in India, is also well known for elimination of thugs. The thug menace was such a high agenda on his tables, that he established a separate Thuggee and Dacoity Department. The first Superintendent of the department, William Henry Sleeman, was instrumental in this mission. He met with his first success when he captured a major thug by the name Syeed Amir Ali “Feringhea”. With Feringhea’s help, he developed an extensive intelligence network to control the thug terror. Together with his 120 men, Sleeman could capture around 3000 thugs, of whom 466 were hanged, 1564 were transported and 933 imprisoned for life. By 1950s, the problem of thuggee was substantially addressed.
Philip Meadows Taylor compiles these accounts (together with some fantasy) in his 1839 book “Confessions of a Thug”, which remained a best-seller in Britain until the rise of Rudyard Kipling. The book also introduced and popularised the word “thug” to the Western Hemisphere.
Aftermath- The Criminal Tribes Act 1871
What happened after Sleeman eliminated thug menace is what holds significance today.
The thug word came into forefront once again during the Revolt of 1857. Several tribal groups turned militant and rebelled, looting and killing British sepoys and officials. Thus, the “menace of professional criminals” was back on British agenda.
Most of the tribal groups were wanderers, travelling in groups. So the demarcation line between thugs and nomads, gypsies, pastorals, travelling petty traders, even eunuchs was near impossible for British. Therefore, they clubbed all these groups together as criminal tribes. An overzealous attempt to put a complete end to this “law and order problem” led to the enactment of Criminal Tribes Act 1871.
The Act defined “criminal tribes” as:
The ethnic or social communities in India which were "addicted to the systematic commission of non-bailable offences" such as thefts and murder.
These people were described as 'habitually criminals’. There was an elaborate system of their profiling and fingerprinting, restrictions were imposed on their movements, they were prohibited from entering towns (this might also be one of the reasons we see settled villages of nomadic tribes circumference towns today some 30-40 kms away from them), the adult male members of such groups were supposed to report weekly to the local police, children were often separated from their parents and sent to “reformatory” homes so that they don’t inherit the criminal skills of their parents.
A British official James Fitzjames Stephen testified:
Professional criminals mean a tribe whose ancestors were criminals from time immemorial, who are themselves destined to commit crime, and whose descendants will be offenders, until the whole tribe is exterminated or accounts for in manner of thugs.
As a result, anyone born in these communities across the country was presumed as a "born criminal", irrespective of their criminal precedents. This gave the police sweeping powers to arrest, control and monitor them.
Jawaharlal Nehru, first Prime Minister of India, was a staunch critic of the Act long way before the Independence of India (1947) and denounced the Act has “monstrous” and “a negation of civil liberty”. Accordingly, the Act was repealed in August 1949 and the tribes that were notified as "criminal tribes" under the Act were de-notified in 1952, when the Act was replaced with the Habitual Offenders Act 1952. The tag “criminal by blood” was wiped off the foreheads of around 5-10 million Indians, but the stigma remained.
The Usual Suspects
The tribes that were de-notified from the Act are officially referred today as the De-notified Tribes (DT) or the Vimukta Jati (VJ) (विमुक्त, freed). Along with other Nomadic Tribes (NT), they constitute a significantly backward section of the society, who were forced to remain aloof from the developmental benefits of modernisation for quite a long period. In spite of substantial improvement, since Independence, in the socio-economic conditions of those living in cities, the situation in rural areas is still bleak on all accounts. Alienation and stereotyping continues to haunt them, with reports every now and then of these people being considered the prima facie suspects of any theft or robbery nearby. This article from The Logical Indian pictures the sorry state of these “ex-criminal tribes”.
The Government of India constituted the National Commission for De-notified, Nomadic and Semi-Nomadic Tribes in January 2015 to look into the present condition of these tribes and suggest remedies. The Commission submitted its report in May 2018.
The trailer
Back to the trailer. Not much should be commented on the movie before actually watching it. However, two things keep bothering the mind. First, why is there Celtic music in the trailer? It is not the case that the sequences gloriously depict the British conquest of India, and therefore warrants the Scott-Irish music. Just because it sounds good doesn’t necessarily mean it is contextually appropriate. Hopefully, the movie has Indian sounds for scenes showing thugs plunder EIC.
Secondly, Katrina Kaif as the dance girl. Nautch (anglicized version of nach) and tawaifs were a popular feature of 18th century India, especially Awadh. There is plethora of visual and text information available on the internet that corroborates the fact that these were fully-clad ladies; dressed in beautiful sparkling attire and danced on simplified form of Kathak.
However, the version depicted in the trailer doesn’t appear to be so. It is ok that the movie has a nautch as “item song”, but the depiction intended to excitement of baser human instincts as marketing strategy is a cheap move. There is ample scope for sensual improvisation in the factually correct classical dance form too. The court dances for Angrej Sahibs used to be enticing, but in it’s original avatar.
A counter argument would be that the movie makers should be given enough artistic freedom. Why does correspondence with facts matter?
Well, it is a big fat movie (said to be the most expensive Bollywood flick) and such movies have a great impact on the general populace. With a general reluctance of people to scroll through history again (after tortuous history years of school), many people out there don’t find the spare time to verify facts. However, this sometimes leads to people come out of theatres cursing the coach for locking the father in closet, or thanking the benevolent businessman for meeting Saddam Hussain and saving lives. (The present reader might not be one of them, but there are several others). Moreover, knowledge of the context helps in evaluation of the work as well as appreciation of efforts and references.
It is a weird combination when film-makers in India liberally use their artistic freedom to deviate far away from factual content and market their films by using the text “based on true events” more often than the title of film itself. As the wisdom goes- with great power comes great responsibility (and Ben Parker wasn’t the first one to say that). See, proves the point.
More words to follow after the movie release.
When I’m not reading or writing, I’m with my friend Ankush, trying hands at creative stuff on this YouTube channel.
