The Strangled Traveler
Colonial Imaginings and the Thugs of India
Translated by Catherine Tihanyi
375 pages
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2 maps, 18 line drawings
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6 x 9
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© 2002
British colonists in 1830s India lived in terror of the Thugs. Reputed to be brutal criminals, the Thugs supposedly strangled, beheaded, and robbed thousands of travelers in the goddess Kali's name. The British responded with equally brutal repression of the Thugs and developed a compulsive fascination with tales of their monstrous deeds.
Did the Thugs really exist, or did the British invent them as an excuse to seize tighter control of India? Drawing on historical and anthropological accounts, Indian tales and sacred texts, and detailed analyses of the secret Thug language, Martine van Woerkens reveals for the first time the real story of the Thugs. Many different groups of Thugs actually did exist over the centuries, but the monsters the British made of them had much more to do with colonial imaginings of India than with the real Thugs. Tracing these imaginings down to the present, van Woerkens reveals the ongoing roles of the Thugs in fiction and film from Frankenstein to Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.
Did the Thugs really exist, or did the British invent them as an excuse to seize tighter control of India? Drawing on historical and anthropological accounts, Indian tales and sacred texts, and detailed analyses of the secret Thug language, Martine van Woerkens reveals for the first time the real story of the Thugs. Many different groups of Thugs actually did exist over the centuries, but the monsters the British made of them had much more to do with colonial imaginings of India than with the real Thugs. Tracing these imaginings down to the present, van Woerkens reveals the ongoing roles of the Thugs in fiction and film from Frankenstein to Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.
Contents
List of Illustrations
Translator's Acknowledgments
Acknowledgments
Note on Transcription
Introduction
Part I. British India and Crime: The Thugs between Myth and Reality
1. Colonizers and Bandits
2. The Anti-Thug Campaign
3. Who Were the Thugs?
Part II. The Colonizers between Science and the Imaginary
4. William Sleeman and Meadows Taylor: Parallel Biographies
5. William Sleeman and Thug Science
6. Meadows Taylor's Imaginary Discourse
7. Later Thug Adventures
Conclusion
Thug Lexicon or Ramasee
Notes
References
Index
Translator's Acknowledgments
Acknowledgments
Note on Transcription
Introduction
Part I. British India and Crime: The Thugs between Myth and Reality
1. Colonizers and Bandits
2. The Anti-Thug Campaign
3. Who Were the Thugs?
Part II. The Colonizers between Science and the Imaginary
4. William Sleeman and Meadows Taylor: Parallel Biographies
5. William Sleeman and Thug Science
6. Meadows Taylor's Imaginary Discourse
7. Later Thug Adventures
Conclusion
Thug Lexicon or Ramasee
Notes
References
Index
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Anthropology: Cultural and Social Anthropology | General Anthropology
Asian Studies: South Asia
History: Asian History | British and Irish History | General History
Religion: South and East Asian Religions
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