Talk:Thuggee/Archive 1

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Lord of the Flies[edit]

Anyone else notice the similarities between the chant mentioned in the "thugges in popular culture" section under Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and the chant of the boys from Lord of the Flies? 124.190.51.253 08:59, 21 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I just wanted to say that this is a wonderful article, and an excellent example of Hobson-Jobson.--69.143.244.79 06:12, 2 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Indian people say this is just British hogwash.

Who are these people and what do they know...? gren 02:55, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Secret Societies, a history[edit]

Should ideas form this book, written by Aron Daraul be inlcuded. It contians information about various stages of iniciation into the Thugs. Also it states that the high levels of the thugs didn't actually believe in Kali. They believed it was simply an energy force. They believed that a high levle Thug had made himself god. There was no right or wrong and physical sense had been killed off. This leads them to look like a left hand religion. Ironically in the book it states they follow Kali's left hand.

This book quotes a Thugee supossdly. However it list no sources. Your thoughts? 63.226.180.162 03:39, 27 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Well, that all depends, firstly on what the nature of the book was, and second, on its accuracy. If this book includes fiction, then it is doubtful that it should be included in this article. Also check its copyright date, to make sure the information was published recently enough to be credible. From what you say, however, the book sounds reliable enough. If you are confident in this book's credibility, site it as a source, and edit the article. However, be sure to state in the section that the information was provided by one specific source, and link its reference, especially if it states an exeption to existing information. Sirtumbleweed (talk) 13:49, 16 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Confusing sentence....[edit]

"Though they themselves trace their origin to seven Muslim tribes, Hindus appear to have been associated with them only in the early days of Islam; at any rate, their religious creed and staunch worship of Kali, the Hindu goddess of destruction, showed no Islamic influence." Rich Farmbrough 19:29, 7 Jun 2005 (UTC)

"Hindu" and "Muslim" in the Thuggee sect[edit]

I'm having trouble wrapping my head around the idea that some of the Thuggees were Muslims, since the entire ideology of the Thuggees is antithetical to the most basic teachings of Islam, starting from monotheism and going on from there. In exactly what sense were some of the Thuggees Muslim, and some Hindu, if the Thuggees were a religious sect? Wouldn't they all have the same religion? Was the 1911 article talking about communal identity? If so, how was/is that identity determined, if not by at least paying lip service to the tenets of the associated religion? How do you tell the difference between a Muslim and a Hindu, if they both worship the same goddess in the same way? --Skoosh 01:33, 21 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]


It's more helpful to think of the Thugs as a criminal confraternity rather than a cult, and Kali as the patron goddess of the confraternity. Sleeman conceived of Thugge as a religion because of its ritual content, not because his informants thought of it in that way. Other professions and trades in India had their own patrons and rituals, after all, without being thought of as religions. It's true that the practice of Thuggee was antithetical to Muslim teachings, and not merely in the respect paid to Kali, but it was also antithetical to Hindu teachings. The question of religious identity is interesting, particularly as Thuggee were adept at disguise and could play the part of Hindu or Muslim at any time. [28.8.2005]

The point is that it makes no sense for a Muslim to have a Hindu "patron goddess" - whether the organisation is described as a confraternity or a cult. This confusion adds to the perception that this is British propaganda.--Jack Upland 02:08, 21 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Since it was a secret society, all of the confraternity's members had to observe the outward forms of one or other of the local religions. To do otherwise would be to attract attention from others. So, back in his home village, a thug would be a Hindu or Muslim and live in the appropriate fashion. When he was a thug, out on an expedition, he would play the role of Hindu or Muslim as was necessary to allay the suspicions of potential victims, and secretly invoke the protection of Kali through magic rituals. While it might make no sense for a Muslim to have a Hindu patron goddess, it certainly made sense for a Thug to ; there's no sense among the Muslim Thug interviewees that the invocation of Kali involved any contradictions.--84.68.226.229 17:55, 8 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Modern Indian mafia???[edit]

The relevance of the 'Modern Indian mafia' section seems a bit dubious to me. Is there any relation except that they are both criminals in India? By this logic the Kray brothers would get a mention in the Oliver Twist article. Unless there are actual links I say remove it (or simply provide a link to another article called 'criminality in India' or something similar). Ashmoo 05:27, 16 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I agree. There is no link between the Thugs and the modern Indian gangs discussed in this section, which should be moved elsewhere. Mikedash 07:56, 16 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, but what about at least a mention of Dacoits? And while there may be no actual link between the Thugs, Dacoits, and the modern Indian mafia; as there is with the cultural aspect of the Japanese Yakuza and Japan's historical feudal crime factions, they deserve at least realted link status. Khiradtalk 01:54, 22 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Guinness Book of Records[edit]

I personally find the Book of Records rather unreliable reference for the article. Also 2 million deaths for the whole period sounds like very low number, considering that in 1812 alone there were at least 40 000 murders by Thuggees according to the British authorities. In 600 years such yearly rate would have meant 12 times more deaths than claimed by the Book of Records, and even some lesser rate anyhow clearly more. 84.169.103.216

Sources suggesting there was an official estimate of 40,000 Thug deaths a year in 1812 are in error. The British had only just stumbled across Thuggee at that date and had no idea of its extent; certainly no such estimate was made, and in 1816, when a guess actually was hazarded, the Superintendent of Police for the Western Provinces suggested that the total was of the order of no more than 'several hundred' per year.
It is true that a figure of 40,000 murders per year was later calculated and publicised - see James Sleeman's book Thug, Or A Million Murders (1920). But the calculation was extremely crude, being extrapolated from a single list of alleged (and unverified) Thug murders committed by some of the most prominent and prolific stranglers to be captured by the British. The average murder rate per Thug per year thus produced was then multiplied by the estimated total number of members of all the many Thug gangs. This is seriously misleading, as rather fewer than one in four Thugs actually worked as a strangler, the remaining members of each gang being concerned with inveigling victims, acting as lookouts or digging graves.
A more accurate estimate for the annual total number killed in India - based on a more extensive study of the figures for murders per year independently supplied by the leaders of several gangs, as preserved in the National Archives of India - suggests an actual annual figure of 2,500 is much closer to truth. Since it is nowadays generally accepted that it is impossible to trace Thuggee back any earlier than 1550-1650 (earlier references are probably to other varieties of criminal, since 'Thug' originally meant nothing more than 'deceiver' or 'con man') the total number of victims claims by the gangs throughout their history probably did not approach even 1 million
Earlier authors, such as Sleeman, were, incidentally, perfectly aware that the total number of murders attributable to the Thugs would notionally have considerably exceeded 2 million. James Sleeman believed Thuggee extended back to at least 1300, which would imply a total death toll in excess of 20 million. In his book, he arbitrarily reduces the annual total he claims to only 10,000, and the length of time the Thug gamgs were active to 200 years, apparently simply in order to avoid producing a figure that he thought his readers would not believe. Mikedash 13:44, 28 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Is there a clear distinction here between murders by members of a definite 'Thuggee' fraternity/cult and murders by other bandits? It doesn't seem to be made in this discussion nor in the article.--Jack Upland 02:11, 21 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Yes; the Thugs' modus operandi was very distinct. Victims were invariably murdered before being robbed, generally (but not always) by being strangled. The number of victims attributed to the Thugs, however, has always been based on estimates of the duration of the practice of Thuggee (impossible to say with accuracy) and on the confessions of captured informers. These may or may not be accurate, but the men concerned were told that the commutation of their death sentences depended on their making full and complete disclosures of all the crimes they were involved in; failure to disclose any that later came to light, or falsely accusing others of a murder, meant the original sentence would be put into practice - and on several occasions it was. So the British, at least, were convinced that the accounts they took down from informers were largely accurate. All that said, the only more or less definite number we have for the Thugs' victims would be the number of corpses exhumed in the course of the anti-Thug campaign; well over a thousand were recovered. Mikedash 11:03, 21 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

A note on the Language[edit]

Someone with a good Sanskrit dictionary would be helpful, but my Hindi dictionary gives: ठग, thus making the transliteration, ṭhag, not thag (there are four 't' sounds in Sanskrit, Hindi, etc. and the differentiation is valuable, and sometimes crucial), and its derivation (in Hindi at least) is the Prakrit ṭhaga-'. Btw, Phansigar, which is more Urdu in construction would be: پهانسى گر, from the Hindi: फाँसी, phāṁsī, noose; and Persian suffix -गर, -gar, roughly - "the person who does". Of course the article already explains it well, just thought I'd break it down, because while the Persian elements don't prove anything in themselves, considering Khariboli, I find it interesting concerning the Muslim question - not to mention the name 'Behram'. Khiradtalk 01:54, 22 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Muslim Thugs[edit]

In the past few days anonymous user 86.135.204.138 has repeatedly deleted references to the existence of Muslim Thugs.

For the record, here is the most relevant excerpt from contemporary records regarding the proportion of Hindu and Muslim Thugs. The source is William Sleeman, Ramaseeana (Calcutta: GH Huttman, 2 vols, 1836) vol.1 p.178; the dialogue is between Sleeman, chief of the Thuggy Department of the East India Company, and his chief informant, a Brahmin Thug named Feringeea, active for nearly 20 years, who had an unparalleled knowledge of the various Thug gangs:

Sleeman: "What is commonly the proportion of Musulmans to Hindoos?"
Feringeea: "In Oude (Avadh) nine-tenths are Musulmans. In the Dooab four-fifths were Hindoos. South of the Narbudda (Narmada) three-fourths Musulmans. In Bundelcund and Saugor one-half were Musulmans. In Rajpootana (Rajasthan) one-fouth Musulmans. In Bengal, Behar, and Orissa about half and half. This is a rough guess, since we have no rule to prescribe or ascertain them."
Mikedash 16:53, 21 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]


Please read the book by Mike Dash before editing[edit]

This is a well-researched book

Thug: the true story of India's murderous cult by Mike Dash (ISBN 1862076049, 2005)

Or read another good book about the thuggee. Thanks. Andries 09:59, 4 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I will remove the categorie of cults, because this is a view criticized by Dash, It is not a view that is supported by an overwhelming majority of scholary opinion. Andries 10:35, 4 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I am suprized to see that the Mike Dash who wrote the book about the thugs also edited this talk page. His comments here were conspicuously well-informed. Thanks and welcome. Andries 12:02, 4 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]


Number of victims is unknown[edit]

There are no reliable estimates possible for the nr. of victims, because it is unknown how long the thugs existed. Source:the book by Dr. Mike Dash. Just mentioning the nr. of 2 million of the Guiness book of records is one-sided, though the nr. may be correct. (I personally believe that it is too high.)Andries 15:46, 5 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thuggee were also Muslims[edit]

Please do not remove the statement that some thugs were muslims. I can and will provide references for this. Andries 21:01, 6 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Phansigars[edit]

What does the word mean? What tongue does it come from? Jachra 03:14, 12 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

noose-operators, as the article explains. I do not know from what language it comes from. Andries

Discussion with a denialist[edit]

By sheer concidence I met a denialist mentioned in one of the external links. He argued that the fact that the British used unconventional methods of getting evidence as an argument that the thugs did not exist. But in hindsight I would argue that the fact that the Mughal system did not work and could not work in getting the thugs behing bars was a contributing factor to the growth of the thugs. Uncoventional methods of acquiring evidences is is no proof that the thugs did not exist. Proof remains proof. It is after all quite common that criminals concentrate on crimes that the police can not catch in a kind of cat and mouse game. Andries 20:44, 17 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Revisionist mention[edit]

I'm sure it must have been mentioned before by someone else, but shouldn't this article at least mention the revisionist view of the Thuggee phenomenon? There are a substantial number of historians who say that while Thugs were a criminal gang, the whole concept was distorted by the British to make it appear that it was some kind of race or religion. They then used Thuggee as a pretence for massive police presence, restricting the movements of iterant populations and increasingly control of India in the 1830s.

And while you may not agree that Sleeman's methods were questionable and his findings even moreso, you surely have to mention the attitudes of many modern scholars towards this. There's really no need to completely censure the revisionist argument, because it isn't some kind of conspiracy theory unsupported by academic research.

This isn't the British Colonial Archives, after all.

Btw sorry for not having an official profile or anything, this is the first time that I've taken an interest in editing wikipedia articles. If you want to reply to this message feel free to email me at answerbook@hotmail.com

You are the first one to complain about it. Nevertheless I admit that the revisionist view on the matter is hardly represented. I guess the reason for this is that the main authors of this article had no access to revisionist works. Andries 19:10, 15 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for clearing that up- the article looks good, with lots of cited sources to back up its statements.

Second Photo[edit]

The second photo is captioned A group of thugs c. 1894 but the article says the thugs were suppressed by the British in 1830... Is the photo therefore not of thugs at all? Lisiate 00:27, 1 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Actually most were suppressed in 1830, but not all. I've added another source that says that they survived in small numbers right until 1890, so this photograph (c. 1894) could be of the Last of the Thuggees. btw, other non-kali affiliated "thugs" too sprang up to fill the void and these criminals too were given the name thugs and it is possible that the photo could be referring to them as "thugs" since by then the word had become common parlance for any history-sheeter. Idleguy 06:06, 1 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for clearing that up. Lisiate 23:47, 3 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Where is the source that says that Thugs were not eliminated in the 1830s and early 1840s? It contradicts with Dash' book and I do not believe that this is true. Andries 11:36, 5 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Thugs were imprisoned for life or executed, but 54 years in prison seems unlikely from the faces of the picture. Andries 11:41, 5 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
the bbc link here states that the last of them were only apprehended in 1890. So 4 years in prison seems likely from the faces on the photo. Idleguy 12:20, 5 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
The BBC link you refer to merely states the Thugs were "extinct" by 1890. This doesn't necessarily apply to active Thugs, but to those in jail. (In fact, some survived a little later than that.) There are no references I know of to murders by Thugs in British or Indian records after the 1840s, and the photo you have added to the article is probably misdated - the original, in the British Library, bears no date and is not attributed to a particular photographer, but my best guess is that it was taken in Jabalpur during the 1860s and may show Thugs who were arrested during operations in the Punjab in the late 1840s. I could be wrong on this, mind you. Mikedash 13:21, 5 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
So you're just guessing the year as 1860 and decided to state that as the year, despite the source stating 1894? Despite your best intensions why should your guess be treated as a source? Can you pl show me the original British Library link of this image? "extinct" is a vague word but I guess it doesn't mean dead, rather it could mean dead or apprehended by 1890. I hope you can provide a source for the precise year of 1860 you've added. Thanks. Idleguy 14:21, 5 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Well, to be fair it is the educated guess of someone who spent three years going through all the extant primary sources on the Thugs prior to writing a book on the subject. Anyway, go here [1], where, as you'll see, the BL catalogue gives the photo's date as 1863, or here [2], wherre another catalogue estimates the date as 1865. The picture itself, when called up from the stacks, bears no such attribution, as I stated. My memory was wrong about the location, admittedly, which is given as Peshawar, hence my supposition that the men concerned were arrested during the anti-Thug campaign in the Punjab. Your source gives the date incorrectly, I'm afraid. Mikedash 16:14, 5 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I couldn't open that BL link, but I guess if you have really done the research on this I'll go with you. btw, this link states that it (thuggees) went on until the late 1800s. Idleguy 17:22, 5 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I checked your link. I wouldn't trust "Dr Haha Lung" and his book on how to throttle people too implicitly. I have it, and it's wildly inaccurate (conflating the Thugs and Japanese Ninja techniques, among other crimes against history). There's a reason for that: Paladin Press, his publisher, is a rather bizarre neo Survivalist/extreme Libertarian outfit dedicated to publishing books on how to kill people; the stuff about Thugs, in their strangulation book, is just to give the title a thin veneer of respectability, and it's about as well-researched as you'd expect from a pseudonymous author whose main leisure interest is inventing spiked devices for ripping out throats.
"If you've ever wondered how to blow up a building, bug a room, pick a lock or kill by touch alone," wrote Bizarre magazine (Jan/Feb 1998), in introducing Paladin to UK readers, "then you ought to know about Paladin Press. This American company has taken full advantage of the US Constitution's Second and Third Amendments (the ones about guns and free speech) to publish a range of books and videos with titles ranging from Streetsweepers: The Complete Book of Combat Shotguns to Be Your Own Undertaker: How to Dispose of a Dead Body.
"And they have a distinguished customer list. Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma bomber, bought books on making explosives from them. In 1993 James Perry, who had bought a copy of Paladin's Hit Man: A Manual for Independent Contractors, killed three people...
"Paladin publishes several hundred titles that nobody else in the world would dare handle... If you think they sound like books for paranoids, psychos and conspiracy freaks, you could be right. On the other hand, who can resist titles like Home-Built Claymore Mines? Not us, that's for sure."
Other select titles from the Paladin catalogue include: Home Workshop Guns for Defense and Resistance, Vol.1 ("Finally, the average person can easily fabricate his own submachine gun - even from a truck axle"); Improvised Home-Built Recoilless Launchers ("What sets this design apart from the others is its unique countershot system, which uses cookies. Yes, cookies!"); and Deadly Brew: Advanced Improvised Explosives ("You are a man of action, frequently encountering explosive situations, so next time be prepared with a deadly brew of your own. For academic study only.") Mikedash 09:48, 6 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Improving this article by using additional good sources[edit]

This article is based on only two reputable sources i.e. 1911 edition of Encyclopedia Britannica and on the book by Mike Dash. I do not think it would be a good idea to use much more of the book by Dash because that would be bordering on a copyright violation. If contributors want to make a substantial improvement to this article then I suggest they find more reputable sources, though improvement is still very well possible without using additional reputabele sources. This article will only deteriorate if contributors add information from non-reputable sources, as can be seen in the section hereabove with the title "Second Photo". Please do not do that again. This article is probably now the best available free article on the subject on the internet. Let us keep it that way. Andries 11:54, 10 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Any way to resolve clashing time claims?[edit]

I stumbled on this link after watching part of the Merchant-Ivory film "The Deceivers." Now I'm curious, but even from the above discussion get no strong sense about the actual emergence of Thugee.

The first graf says "operating from the 17th century (possibly as early as 13th century) to the 19th century," but the Origin and Recruitment sections says rather that "The earliest authenticated mention of the Thugs is found in the following passage of Ziau-d din Barni's History of Firoz Shah (written about 1356): 'In the reign of that sultan (about 1290), some Thugs were taken in Delhi, ...'"

I'm not sure what the word authenticated means in that 2d excerpt if the introductory graf is justified in being so tentative. The "origins" excerpt sure makes it sound like the introduction could be changed, if that "about 1356" source's reference to "about 1290" is an accepted date.

Cheers,

timbo 04:22, 4 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The book by Mike Dash asserts that the following sentence is no proof that the "stranglers-robbers movement" already existed in the 13th century. The reason is, if I remember it well, that the word 'thug may then have had a different meaning.
"The earliest authenticated mention of the Thugs is found in the following passage of Ziau-d din Barni's History of Firoz Shah (written about 1356)'"
I will try to correct this when I have time.
The problem with this entry is by the way that it leans to heavily on only two sources i.e. the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica and the book by Dash. I believe that both are fine, though the Encyclopedia Britannica is outdated, but I cannot be sure unless I compare them with more sources.
Dash' book strikes me as balanced and I see in his stance on the matter regarding the existence of the thugs an analogy with current discussion whether distinct social movements such as the Anti-Cult Movement really exist or that it is just redundant abstract, merely theoretical concept. See Talk:Anti-Cult_Movement
Andries 16:35, 4 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

GA Notes (On Hold)[edit]

GA review (see here for criteria)
  1. It is reasonably well written.
    a (prose): b (MoS):
  2. It is factually accurate and verifiable.
    a (references): b (citations to reliable sources): c (OR):
  3. It is broad in its coverage.
    a (major aspects): b (focused):
  4. It follows the neutral point of view policy.
    a (fair representation): b (all significant views):
  5. It is stable.
  6. It contains images, where possible, to illustrate the topic.
    a (tagged and captioned): b lack of images (does not in itself exclude GA): c (non-free images have fair use rationales):
  7. Overall:
    a Pass/Fail:

Hi! Overall, I'd just like to say that overall this is a well written article. I'm just a little concered about the sources. Mile Dash's book is a great source, but I think it needs a few more repuatable sources. Also, the last paragrah in the section Possible misinterpretation of Thuggee by the British needs some commas ("In his book, ..."). This article also presents all sides of the subject well. (eg. "Did the Britsh misssinterpret the Thuggee?" etc.). I putting this on hold so a few sources can be found and the commas fixed. If you have any question or comments, please contact me on my talk page and I'll respond here. Good luck! Gutworth 02:28, 18 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Failed GA[edit]

I'm failing this GA, as it has been on hold for more than 7 days. Please renominate if you think the outstanding issues have been addressed. Mike Christie (talk) 14:14, 28 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

fatima[edit]

I have just finished "The Curse of Kali" by Audrey Blankenhagen. {ISBN: 1-4033-8037-6 (e-book), ISBN: 1-4033-8038-4 (Paperback) , ISBN: 1-4033-8039-2 (Dustjacket)} Although its a work of fiction, so unsuitable as a citation, but i would like to refer to a quote from Page 126 of this book.

"‘Kunkali is another name for the Goddess Kali and means “Man Eater”,

because of her alleged ferocious lust for blood sacrifices. She is also known

as Bhowani, Durga and to the Moslem sect of Thuggees, Fatima."

Can anyone shed more light to statement. {This book is Indophobic and as Anti-Hindu as you can get. It portrays Indians and Hindus as uncivilized barbarians, while colonial british as angels. But i am not concerned about the other aspects of the book.} I just want to know more about the Fatima thing and the fact if thuggee was actually just considered as a muslim sect.--nids(♂) 05:47, 22 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The discovery of the thuggee reinforced anti-Hindu and and anti-Indian sentiments among the British and this could be stated in this article. Andries 03:37, 6 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

removed and rewritten becaus contradicted by listed source[edit]

I have removed and rewritten the following sentence which was sourced to Dash. I could not find clear support in Dash' book for this statement though

"The Thuggee cult was suppressed by the British rulers of India in 1828,[1] due largely to the efforts of Lord William Bentinck, Governor General of India from 1828, who started an extensive campaign involving profiling, intelligence, and executions."

Not Bentinck, but Sleeman. Not just 1828, but the 1830s. The network consisted of thousands of men, so this could not have been done in just one year. Andries 03:28, 6 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

If you want to re-insert the sentence mentioned hereabove then please write down chapter title, quote, and page nr. (I only have the Dutch version of the book, so I would appreciate the chapter title and quote). Andries 03:48, 6 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Overreliance on Unreliable Sources[edit]

I have serious reservations about this article, which relies too much on Dash's book, which in turn relies too much on the Thuggee archive. I've written a blog post about the legal regime under which these documents were collected and why even a British Colonial judge was removed from his post at the time because he questioned the legitimacy of the Thuggee commission. I would like to see this article take a much more serious look at some of the sources I've linked to in that post, all of which call the point of view presented in Dash into question. kerim (talk) 01:35, 23 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Dash has responded to me on my talk page, and I have updated the blog post with a reply to Dash. I look forward to seeing Dash more involved with correcting the many factual errors on this page, and apologize for attributing those errors to his book. kerim (talk) 23:19, 24 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
May be some of the denialist view can be inserted more if we find reliable up to date sources for it, but to dismiss Dash' book as an unreliable source strikes me as flawed. Dash has a PHd inj history and his book is semi-scholarly containing footnotes and seems to be the result of very thorough research.
I personally find Dash' view on the matter as presented in the book plausible and convincing. Clearly, like highwaymen, thugs needed specialized skills, but very different from each other, so it is unlikely that there was much overlap. This justifies the conceptualization of thuggee. Andries (talk) 12:43, 25 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
You misunderstand. I am not saying to dismiss Dash's book as an unreliable source, but to highlight the unreliability of the sources that he uses. He himself does this in an appendix, and the unreliability of these sources is noted in both Wangner and Roy as quoted in my blog post. The difference between the denialists (as you call them) and Dash is largely a matter of emphasis. (See below for an account of the legal system under which this testimony was extracted.) Do you really want to assert with such forcefulness "facts" largely taken from the testimony of people tried under such a system? If you heard that a modern court was interrogating people and trying them under such a system, how much credence would you attribute to their testimony? It is true that Dash tried to compensate for these deficiencies, but even if we accept Dash's account, don't you think it is important to highlight the unreliability of the sources Dash was using - as he does in his own book? kerim (talk) 14:06, 25 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Dash admits that the sources that he used are unreliable with regards to the motivations of the men for thuggee. He denies that in general the evidence for the crimes and existence of thuggee was unreliable, though of course he admits that some mistakes must have been made in individual cases in the later years of the campaign. All this is plausible because Sleeman's team were crimefighters, not anthroplogists. Andries (talk) 16:17, 13 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
First of all, Dash largely relies upon the same data as evidence for both motivations and the crimes themselves. It is true that he spent a lot of time looking closely at this data and cross-referencing it, etc. but it is still very questionable data, and should be highlighted as such in the article. The point not being that Dash was wrong, but that reasonable people might differ as to how to interpret such data. Regarding your second point, no contemporary crime fighters would be allowed to prosecute a case on such flimsy evidence. And for good reason too. kerim (talk) 01:22, 14 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I admit the same data, but the data was largely generated and extracted from the suspects by Sleeman's for the purpose of crime fighting and finding evidence for crime. Sleeman's team was not very interested in generating data for assessing the motivations of thugs. Andries (talk) 14:41, 2 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Beliefs and Practices Section over-emphasises colonial account[edit]

Even anti-denialist writers like Dash and Wagner are completely dismissive of the colonial accounts pertaining to Kali worship. As Dash says, “The emphasis placed by Sleeman … on the role of religion in Thug life was thus enormously exaggerated.” Wagner says essentially the same thing. While the article is clear to attribute these claims to "19th century writings" it does not make it sufficently clear how unreliable these writings are, even according to the sources used for this article. kerim (talk) 14:20, 25 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

British destruction of the secret society brutal and unjust[edit]

Even anti-denialist writers like Dash and Wagner are honest about how brutal and unjust the British system was in its suppression of the Thuggees. But this is not presented in the section of the article dealing with this topic. Mike Dash’s book states that between 1826 and 1848 4,500 men were tried for being a thuggee. Of these 4,500, 504 (one in nine) were hanged, and “three thousand more were sentenced to life in prison,” with “most of the rest” either serving between seven and fourteen years’ hard labour, or dying in prison awaiting trial.

Dash actually says they were tried for “thug crimes,” but in Parama Roy's chapter on thuggees (from her book Indian Traffic) we learn that it was enough to just be accused of being a "thug" it didn't matter if you were actually proven to have committed any crimes or not:

The lack of independent witnesses, the unavailability in many cases of both bodies and booty—the sheer paucity of positivist evidence, in other words—could only be resolved in one way. The most important criminal conspiracy of the century (of all time, some of the authors claimed) could be adequately engaged only by a new conception of law. ... Since the law as currently defined made the complicity of individuals in particular crimes almost impossible to establish, specific criminal acts were no longer punishable as such. Instead, it was … enough to be a thug, without actually being convicted of a specific act of thuggee, to be liable to the exorbitant measures of the Thuggee and Dacoity Department. ... It permitted the arrest of entire families, including women and children, as legitimate means of entrapping active (male) thugs; since thuggee was supposed to be a family affair anyway, transmitted in the genes and passed on from father to son, wives and children were also fit targets for the colonial state’s punitive and corrective measures. The act admitted the testimony of approvers [convicts who confessed in exchange for a pardon] in lieu of the testimony of independent witnesses (which had been disallowed under Islamic law), a move which created a remarkable mechanics of truth production and conviction.
... All those identified as thugs by approvers’ testimony were automatically guilty, even if no specific crimes could be proved against them and even if there was no (other) evidence of their ever having associated with other thugs.

kerim (talk) 14:21, 25 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

What does it prove that special laws were instituted against the thuggee? Does it prove that the thuggee likely did not exist? No. For me it proves that criminals always involved in a cat and mouse game of finding ways with law enforcement agencies to get rich (or escape poverty) without being caught for crimes. Please take into account that the often corrupt police and detection methods, and recording of crimes was very primitive and localized. This process of refinement of methods by the thug is something that Dash also describes in his book. For example, he describes that thugs in a certaind year started to pierce the eyes of their victims to escape discovery. Also that they abandandoned specific weapons to escape discovery. This process of refinement is not exactly unique to India or to that time. Andries (talk) 16:29, 13 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
This is the most circular reasoning I have ever seen. The defense is guilty because the prosecution had to use unjust means to extract their testimony, thus proving their guilt? kerim (talk) 00:28, 14 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The same information (only slightly changed) over and over.[edit]

I think someone should take an overall responsibility and tighten up this article. The same subjects pops up over and over, with only slightly changed details or perspectives. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 90.224.89.191 (talk) 21:04, 1 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Completely true. I am interested in condensing it. Andries (talk) 21:07, 1 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I tried to condense it and remove repitiions. I hope it is better now. Andries (talk) 08:15, 10 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Durga, not Kali[edit]

A possible mistake: Were the Thuggees worshippers of Kali? I live near the Indian community in Toronto and most regard a "Thuggee" as Durga worshippers from India's past. --hidoshi@hidoshi.com 07:41, May 10, 2005 (UTC)

You are absolutely right. Hindu Thuggies worshipped Durga, and not Kali. Descendants of Thuggees are still to be found in abundance and they tell a different story than the British give us. The British propogated Kali as a female Satan and Thuggies as "Satan Worshippers" who sacrified humans. However most of the Thuggies I met were Muslims. They claim they have nothing to do with mythological thugggies. Their ancestors were loyal to Tipu Sultan and when he was defeated and killed, they formed a gorilla group and attacked and merchants who supplied supplies to the British. Yes they had Hindus because Tipu Sultan was loved by his Hindu subjects equally and was seen as a national hero.
Hassanfarooqi 03:06, 21 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
According to the article:
Durga is considered by Hindus to be an aspect of Kali
Reading the article on Kali seems to equivocate, sometimes referring to Durga as an "associated" deity and in other cases making reference to the two as alternative names for one entity. It's possible that differing vedas and other texts are also inconsistent on the matter. So I'm not sure that this article (on the Thuggee) should be changed. Perhaps we could parenthically link to Durga near the first reference to Kali. 99.51.74.201 (talk) 03:17, 19 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

A few problems with the text[edit]

Unsupported assertion without bibliographic support: "The defeat of the Thuggees played a part in securing Indian loyalty to the British Raj." Please provide an explanation, evidence, or a source. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Reasonsjester (talk • contribs) 06:07, 28 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

removed unsourced statement. Andries (talk) 16:58, 23 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Undue weight to denialist view[edit]

I partially reverted Protozoon's unsourced edits because it gives undue weight to the denialist view. I admit that the denialist view should be expanded more but please do this in the correct section and with reputable sources. Andries (talk) 16:56, 23 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Please take into consideration that anti-denialists like Mike Dash admit that the British colonial civil servants had distorted thuggee phenomenon. They had portrayed the thuggee more sensational, bigger, more religiously inspired, more hereditary, and more Hindu than it was. So in this respect, denialist and anti-denialist agree. Admitting the distortion by the British is not the same as admitting that the thuggee network did not exist. Andries (talk) 17:20, 23 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I don't agree. The "denialists" are not denying bandits existed in colonial India. Nor are the numbers or effectiveness of the bandits fundamental to the issue. The concept of the Thugee implies that there was a specific religious cult, dedicated to Kali (i.e. Hindu), which glorified criminal activity, in particular robbery and murder. If this is not true, the Thugees are a myth. The fact that the British colonialists, and their latter-day apologists, wilfully confuse bandits of non-Hindu background with those who may be genuine Kali cultists does not contribute to the credibility of their claims.--Jack Upland (talk) 08:55, 25 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Category:Secret societies vs. Category:Secret societies related to organized crime[edit]

Category:Secret societies related to organized crime is itself a category within Category:Secret societies. — Robert Greer (talk) 02:29, 16 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]


Indian perspective[edit]

This article gives a standard brit story line highly linear. To Thug in hindi/punjabi/urdu/maithali/ and most north indian languages is to con some one. a thugee is a conman, even today this is a language. In english a thug is a tough guy, in hindi a thug is a fast talking conman. There has been no thugee cult where both hindus and muslims worshiped kali, any one cans still observe that in india muslims would rarely go to a non muslim shrine of any sort. Its hindus who go to ajmer sharif, no muslim goes to kali temple in calcutta. This is not to deny that organized gangs did not exist but all british writers of that era relied more on self glorification and imagination rather than facts. This has to be pointed out.

Posted by User:70.111.149.150, 2 Feb 2006

About Thugs in popular culture[edit]

No references about the movie Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, although the Thugees are shown all movie long. What about adding it?

date of picture[edit]

The description of the picture gives the date ca. 1894 for http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Group_of_Thugs.gif

However, the article mentions the date of the photo as: ca 1863

Which one is right? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 193.254.175.108 (talk) 13:24, 12 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

date of picture[edit]

Under "Magnitude of the Problem" it says that Behram never stood trial for his murders, but on his own page (which is linked to in the sentence) it says he was hanged in 1840. Was he hanged without trial, or what? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.216.64.241 (talk) 15:21, 23 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

good question. Will investigate. Andries (talk) 13:40, 29 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Time period[edit]

Under "Time period," it is stated that "the term and/or activity possibly dates back as early as the 13th century." However, under "Origin and recruitment" it is stated that the "earliest recorded mention of the Thugs [...] (written about 1356)"

1356 is the 14th century - is there any documentation available to support a 13th century presence? Klugerama (talk) 18:24, 13 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Pronunciation[edit]

Is the U pronounced as thu or ug? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 209.56.12.249 (talk) 04:31, 17 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Non-Hindu Thuggee[edit]

Thugees used dried puffa fish liver as a secret weapon..it contains a fungus which produces TTX the worlds most powerful neurotoxin when a tiny amount the size of a match head is ingested there are no symptoms for two days... then there is paralysis and coma this is when they garrotte their victims with the silk scarfs There may have been Sikh and Muslim bandits, dacoits, robbers, thieves, murderers in late 18th century India. But clubbing them with Thuggee is misleading and mischievous. To this end, Thuggee is narrowly defined as a religious Hindu occult practice only. Seethakathi (talk) 05:04, 6 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

As far as I know there is no reliable source for your view. There is however a reliable source for a very different view i.e. that thugs were criminal secret fraternities (with both Muslim and Hindu members) with a very peculiar modus operandi and with the patron saint of Kali. This is the view of the book by Mike Dash who is also a Wikipedia editor. Because you do not supply a reliable source and there is a reliable source for a different view, I will revert. See Talk:Thuggee/Archive_1#Muslim_Thugs. Andries (talk) 18:02, 6 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Here are some entries that may be of interest:

Shyamal (talk) 04:36, 7 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Only this link supports your argument. Rest are irrelevant and discuss about thugs in general. So, I will keep your version but still remove remaining uncited sentences.Seethakathi (talk) 06:36, 7 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Some of the sources listed here are old and older sources tend to be very prejudiced about the religious component (magnify what they see as backwards cruel Hindu superstition), as Dash repeatedly points out. Andries (talk) 19:46, 7 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Relation to word 'thug'[edit]

Since the Thuggee are generally cited as being the origin of the modern English word thug, would it be worth mentioning this somewhere on the page? -Worldbeing (talk) 23:09, 23 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

In popular culture section[edit]

  • An edit war has started over whether to keep the section Thuggee#In popular culture. One opinion is that it is "not encyclopedic, and does not cite reliable sources". But often, one man's trivia or cruft is another man's useful relevant matter; and as regards citing sources, some would say that, for each statement that Thuggee occurs in a named fiction story, the text of that fiction story is the reference. I restored the section so that people can see it to discuss it.Anthony Appleyard (talk) 07:59, 7 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
At least the following must stay somewhere in the article because it is very notable and very influential: "The story of Thuggee was popularised by books such as Philip Meadows Taylor's novel Confessions of a Thug, 1839, leading to the word "thug" entering the English language. Ameer Ali, the protagonist of Confessions of a Thug was said to be based on a real Thug called Syeed Amir Ali."
Not yet sure about the rest, though. Andries (talk) 12:21, 7 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I read that. What could be done is to trim the list, but according to Mesoderm's own criteria, the list should not be removed entirely, because thuggee had a clear cultural impact, especially in the 19th century. Andries (talk) 10:43, 10 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]


Stop deleting Muslim thugs[edit]

Thugs were muslims too. See Talk:Thuggee/Archive_1#Muslim_Thugs. Andries (talk) 06:36, 7 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Timespan section[edit]

I have just deleted the Timespan section because it has remained unsourced for too long. In case anyone should find decent sources, it said

The concept of Thuggee is known from the 17th century, though the term and/or activity possibly dates back as early as the 13th century. Thuggee was actively practised at least through the end of the 19th century. If remnants of the Thuggee tradition survived into the 20th and 21st centuries, they did so very covertly. The film Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom is based on the premise that Thuggee cults survived covertly into the early 20th century. Suppression by the British was important in reducing Thuggee activity, but more significant was the introduction of modern methods of travel, in particular replacing travelling on foot or by horse in groups by the railway, which effectively rendered Thuggee obsolete.

- Sitush (talk) 16:19, 13 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Aftermath section usefulness?[edit]

The bulk of the Aftermath section is made up of a quote from Twain which doesn't appear to take account of the humorist's frequent use of satire and irony. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 101.175.191.124 (talk) 13:17, 27 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Terminology confusion[edit]

There seems to be some confusion within the article about the meaning of the word "Thuggee". Initially it is defined as "the acts of thugs", but later, in "Thuggee trace their origin to..", "The discovery of the Thuggee was...", etc., it seems to be used to mean the people themselves. 86.128.3.30 (talk) 21:50, 12 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Muslim and Sikh Thuggees[edit]

If the goddess Kali was the patron deity of Hindu Thuggees, who was the patron of Muslim or Sikh Thuggees? Surely it can't be Kali, because both Muslims & Sikhs worship the One God.--Splashen (talk) 04:08, 23 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I do not know how this worked or I forgot after reading the book by Mike Dash. However it is well documented that Muslim thugs existed too. Andries (talk) 15:04, 26 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Andries is correct, the biggest killer of these, called Behram Khan was a muslim as well. Bladesmulti (talk) 15:10, 26 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Spared Groups[edit]

Long time ago i read that the Thuggee tried to spare certain groups, because they thought their murder would enrage Kali, and that some of them attributed the fall of the cult to indifferent murder of people. As far as i can remember these were People who worked with Gold, the Disabled, and Women. I also remember that after they were done killing, they used to consume a sugar called Grom (dont know if the spelling is right), and pour some of it into a hole in the ground, as an offering to Kali. Should we include that, and search for Sources? --A941 (talk) 02:20, 3 May 2015 (UTC) Found this: http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/82956430 --A941 (talk) 02:24, 3 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Troubadours[edit]

Isn't this where the historical background from the line "And I laid traps for troubadours who get killed before they reach Bombay" in Sympathy for the Devil came from? UN$¢_Łuke_1Ø21Repørts 12:52, 9 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

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