Thuggee
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Thuggee, also known as Thugs, are the gang based in Indian subcontinent, mainly central India and Bengal. They are said to have committed murders (mainly via strangling) and robberies.
Etymology edit
The English word thug comes from the Hindi one ठग (ṭhag), which means 'swindler' or 'deceiver'. The words who are connected to it are the verb thugna ('to deceive'), from the Sanskrit स्थग (sthaga 'cunning, sly, fraudulent') and स्थगति (sthagati, 'he conceals'). This term, with the description of murder and robbery of travellers by a cult worshipping Kali.
History edit
The Thugs were formed as a brotherhood of assassins rather than thieves around the 13th century as referred by Ziau-d din Barni's History of Firoz Shah (written about 1356). He narrated an incident of a thousand of thugs being arrested and sent to Lakhnauti on Gaur on the order of the sultan Jalad-ud-din Khalji.
| “ | In the reign of that sultan [about 1290], some Thugs were taken in Delhi, and a man belonging to that fraternity was the means of about a thousand being captured. But not one of these did the sultan have killed. He gave orders for them to be put into boats and to be conveyed into the lower country, to the neighbourhood of Lakhnauti, where they were to be set free. The Thugs would thus have to dwell about Lakhnauti and would not trouble the neighbourhood of Delhi any more. | „ |
| ~ Sir HM Elliot, History of India, iii. 141 |
A record from D. F. McLeod traced it to some Muslim tribes who fled Delhi after murdering a physician. Another record traced it to some great Muslim families who fled after they committed a murder of a favored slave of Akbar. According to other traditions conserved by the Thugs themselves, they were Kanjars or ascended from those who worked in the Mughal camps. Others have criticized the Thugs rising on the dissolved armies in employment of Indian rulers after the British conquest.
British suppression edit
The British found out the presence of the Thugs in Southern India for the first time in 1807, and in Northern India in 1809, they were discovered attempting to suppress them being carried out from 1809 to 1812.
After a dispute between the zamindar Tejun and the Thug Ghasee Ram started in 1812, the Thugs took refuge with his family under another landlord called Laljee. Tejun in turn revealed the thugs of Sindouse to Nathaniel Halhed. Thomas Perry, the magistrate of Etawah, gathered some soldiers of the East India Company under the command of Halheld in 1812 to eliminate the Thugs. Laljee and his forces including over 100 Thugs were defeated, with the village of Murnae, a headquarter of the Thugs, destroyed and burnt by the Company soldiers. Laljee fled to Rampura and the southern banks of Sindh River only to be caught by the Marathas who turned him over to the company.
Aftermath edit
After many years of clash between the Thugs and the British rule in Indian subcontinent, the Thug cult was mostly extinct.
But after India gained independence from the British Empire in 1947, tribes considered criminals still exist.
In popular culture edit
In Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984), the Thuggee cult was portrayed with fictionalized religious ritual and an antagonistic faction. It is led by the primary antagonist Mola Ram.