Thugs and the goddess

 

[Disclaimer: This piece is not about the current controversies about different portrayals of Goddess Kali; it’s about cops and robbers. As usual.]

 

During the IPS training, we are attached for a spell with a Police Station, to either function as the SHO or work closely with the SHO. In the premises of the Police Station I was attached with, there was a temple of Goddess Kali. Later, I found that most of the Police stations had temples devoted to goddess Kali, the goddess of Time, or alternatively, the goddess of destruction and renewal. It is customary for many Police officers to offer prayers before the Goddess before embarking on dangerous raids or missions. The SHO explained that Goddess Kali is believed to imbue a devotee with superhuman powers, required in the conquest of good over evil.

 

I further quizzed the SHO as to who was the revered God or Goddess for the other side, i.e., the criminals. He sheepishly admitted, Goddess Kali again. Reason was the same – they also wanted superhuman powers to overpower their victims and to escape or outwit the cops. Although on opposite sides of the fence, we pray to the same god(dess) to achieve opposite outcomes. Well, some people believe that cops and robbers are two sides of the same coin but that’s another story …

 

When I was a district SP, I found that the Kali Puja committee of the Kali temple in a town was headed by the local SHO. I was a little against Police officers getting personally involved in the religious affairs of the town so advised my officers against such involvements. However, many prominent citizens of the town sought my appointment to persuade me against the diktat. What I learnt was that the Kali temple in the town was an extremely cherished place of worship, social activities and general congregation. It was started long before through the energetic and strenuous efforts of the then SHO of the Police station who went around collecting donations in the form of cash, kind and land for the construction of the temple. The best part was, the SHO was himself a Muslim. This had struck a very poignant chord amongst the general populace and the temple not only became a place of congregation for people of all faiths, it also served as an all-faith syncretic bond amongst people. Since then, it was the tradition of the place to have the SHO as the Chairman of the Committee and the general population could not conceive of the temple and all that it stood for without the involvement and active participation of the Police and the incumbent SHO. In that one Police station area, I never had to bother about the communal fabric coming under any strain.

 

Goddess Kali also featured prominently in one of the most successful Police operations during British times.

 

In Indian folklore, mentions of a very secret organisation, specialising in cheating, robbing and killing unwary travellers were common. However, not much was known about this organisation or even the fact that there was an organisation. The gang members were called Thag or Thaga (Thuggees by Britishers, later), sometimes considered the world’s first Mafia, which operated from the 13^th to the 19^th Century.

 

The word "thug" has its roots in the Hindi and Urdu word thag, which means thief or swindler, originally derived from the Sanskrit verb “sthagati” (to conceal). These robbers were adept at concealment and distraction. A common method used by them was to distract their targets while attempting to strangle them from behind, usually with a piece of cloth. They were such experts that the killing would occupy nano seconds. They used a secret language called ‘Ramasee’ (intimations of J.K. Rowling’s Parseltongue?) to disguise their real intentions from their targets. They also used certain signs by which the members recognised each other in the most remote parts of India.

 [Two thuggees pointing upwards to the sky to distract their

victim, while another creeps up behind to strangle him.]

 

Thugees' preference for garrotting might have originated from a law during the Mughal Empire under which, for a murderer to be sentenced to death, he must have shed the blood of his victim. Those who murdered but did not shed blood faced imprisonment, hard labour and penalty, but not execution.

 

Here is the interesting part. The gang members were both Hindus and Muslims but worshipped Goddess Kali, considering themselves as the Goddess’s children, having been created from her sweat. They would eat separately but smoke and drink together. Thugees actually believed that they were saving human lives by offering the human blood of their victims to the Goddess who needed to subsist on blood because of divine command. Without this offering, she might destroy all mankind because she needed to feed on blood because of the divine command. They believed that each murder prevented Kali's arrival for one millennium. Muslim thugs did not pray to Goddess Kali but worshipped her and assimilated her in their religion as a spirit subordinate to Allah.

According to Thuggee legend, Kali once battled a terrible demon which roamed the land, devouring humans as fast as they were created. However, every drop of the monster’s blood that touched the ground spawned a new demon, until the exhausted Kali finally created two human men, armed with rumals (handkerchiefs/scarves), and instructed them to strangle the demons. When their work was finished, Kali instructed them to keep the rumals in their family and use them to destroy every man not of their kindred. This was the tale told to Thuggee initiates.

The nature and extent of the organisation came to light when one member, Syeed Amir Ali (also called “Feringhea”) was captured and, based on his confessions, a mass grave with a hundred bodies was discovered. One British officer, William Henry Sleeman who had arrested Feringhea in 1835, made it his life’s mission to eradicate the scourge of these brigands. As far as hardcore investigative Policing was concerned, Sleeman was way ahead of his times, even by European and American standards. What he found was that this form of robbery was not an episodic occurrence but the doings of an extensive and fairly well-organised network spanning a very large swathe across much of India. A new department was created and was called the Thuggee and Dacoity Department. Sleeman was its first Superintendent. This Department lasted till 1904 when it gave way to the central Criminal Intelligence Department (CID).

 

Sleeman built a formidable intelligence network and infiltrated the top-secret network of Thuggees. He also played one faction against another and reaped rich dividends. Through relentless operations by him, more than 1,400 thuggees were hanged or transported for life. One of them, Birham confessed to having killed more than 900 persons with his turban. Within seven short years, Sleeman managed to extirpate the formidable organisation which had operated in lethal secrecy across the length and breadth of India for six centuries.

 

Sleeman himself survived three assassination attempts on his life. He was also against British expansionism in India, repeatedly pleading (in writing) to leave the local kingdoms alone when there was no anarchy or disintegration of law and order. He wrote about wild children who had been raised by wolves with his notes on six cases. This discovery inspired Rudyard Kipling's Mowgli character in The Jungle Book. There is a village, Sleemanabad, in Madhya Pradesh, named in his honour.

 

There has been some dispute about the Thuggees, or at least the British portrayal of it. After reading up on them, the disputes and the stories I grew up with, I believe a very secret and very extensive cult did exist and the members specialised in strangulation killing with the help of just a piece of cloth and nothing else. The dispute should be more about how cohesive and how organised the cult was.