When Britishers Tackled Dacoits: Thuggee and Dacoity Suppression Acts

During colonial rule, the image of thugs and their discourse received great attention. Thugs according to the British were highway criminals who engaged in robbery, strangulation, murder, and looting. As a result, in the 1830s, British authorities took drastic measures to combat the threat posed by thugs.

Thugs were a menace to colonial officials and the best way to deal with them was by placing new rules and regulations. Image source: India Heritage Walks

'Thugs of Hindostan', a Bollywood film starring Amir Khan, Amitabh Bachchan, and Katrina Kaif, depicts the prevalence of thugs and dacoity in India during British colonial rule.

While the film did not perform well at the box office, it does paint an intriguing picture for history buffs who want to examine the scene of thuggee culture or the presence of thugs in British India or the Indian subcontinent in general.

During colonial rule, the emergence of thugs and their discourse received great attention. However, there is some evidence of thugs or robbers in ancient and medieval India. The thugs are first mentioned in Ẓiyāʾ-ud-Dīn Baranī’s Tarikh i Firoz Shahi, which was written around 1356. Another reference to thugs or robbers can be found in Moroccan traveller Ibn Battuta's Rihala, where he frequently mentions threats from robbers, bandits, or thugs while travelling through dense forests.

However, it was during the period of colonial rule that the practice of thuggee was officially documented and received significant attention from colonial officers. Thugs according to the British were highway criminals who engaged in robbery, strangulation, murder, and looting. They were frequently classified as a religious sect that was a devotee of Goddess Kali. Thugs were also labelled as phasigars by colonial officials because they strangled their victims with handkerchiefs or rumaal.

One of the earliest archives of thugs in British India was created in 1809 during a murder investigation in Etawah, in present-day Uttar Pradesh. Magistrate James stated in his report to Commander in Chief William Dowdeswell that the thugs were a "strongly leagued organisation" that was highly secretive. However, it was an anonymous article published in the Calcutta Gazette by William Henry Sleeman, a British soldier and administrator, that drew significant attention and shed light on thuggee as a religious practice. In that article, Sleeman claimed that "thuggee was an organised system of religious and civil polity ready to receive converts from all religions and sects and to urge them to the murder of their fellow creatures under the assurance of high rewards in this world and the next."

These five characteristics- strangulation, secrecy, organisation, antiquity, and religiosity—distinguished thuggee from other types of criminality and served as the foundation for the Thuggee Act of 1836, which prosecuted thuggee separately from other crimes.

Interestingly, the British account of Thuggee essentially demonstrated thugs as phasigars, rather than cheats or swindlers, as thugs were known in ancient and medieval India. This characteristic and understanding of thugs in British India sparked a series of legal acts and laws aimed at their abolition and strict regulation.

As a result, in the 1830s, British authorities took drastic measures to combat the threat posed by thugs. William Sleeman was given a significant role in the suppression of the Thuggees and dacoits. He implemented several measures to effectively combat thugs' criminal activities. Sleeman believed that acquiring information from one group of thugs could be used to attack another group because the basic motives and methods of Thuggees are similar.

Furthermore, the Thuggee Act of 1836 stated that "whoever shall be proved to have belonged, either before or after the passing of this act, to any gangs of thugs, either within or without the territories of the East India Company, shall be punished with imprisonment for life, with hard labour."

Meanwhile, William Bentick established a separate department known as the Thuggee and Dacoity Department to deal with criminal activities covered by the Thuggee Acts. Its superintendent, William Sleeman, kept meticulous records and files on thugs and their activities.

Other acts were passed in addition to the Act of 1836 to launch an official attack on the practice of thuggee. These were enacted in 1837 and 1839, and they lasted until 1848. They all devised strategies to reduce the criminal activities of thugs. The acts were also beneficial because Thuggees arrested by British authorities were later turned into loyal informants and played an essential role in eradicating thug culture.

It is worth noting that the English wrote the majority of the official accounts of thugs in British India. This has led historians to believe that 'Thuggees' were the creation of the British, who used them to establish judicial rule in India and further their colonial interests. While some historians completely deny the existence of thugs, others, such as Kim Wagner, take a middle ground and argue that while thugs existed in colonial India, they were a result of the Britishers' harsh social and economic policies.