Thugs

Abstract

The Thugs hold a unique position in Anglo-Indian lore, achieving a fame only matched by Tipu Sultan and sati. The name of Tipu is now a distant memory in English, sati is a faintly known (though recurrent) custom but ‘thug’ has entered the language, albeit with a different meaning. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, they take their name from the Hindi word ‘tug’, which it defines as meaning to deceive — hence the name of the cult of deceivers. However, things are not as they seem. A Practical Hindi English Dictionary defines the two closest words thus:

Dhoka: deception, guile, subterfuge.

Thug: a cheat, an impostor;

v. cheating, dupery.¹

It appears from these two definitions that the word applied to the sect means ‘cheats’ rather than the accepted ‘deceivers’. The British, demonizing a ‘primitive’ India and its inhabitants in the 1830s, choose to define the group using the second word but deriving a meaning from the first. In fact, the word thugatha, which is the adjectival form from Thug, is defined as meaning merely ‘nonplussed’. This is the beginning of the series of inconsistencies and romancing that riddle the story of Sleeman and his policing of India.