I read this entry very cursorily on Christmas day, mistakenly skipping Dash’s comment within the body of the text. I assumed Kerim’s reference to Dash’s response indicated it would be in the “response” section, and since only “Calvin” had signed the posts there, I mistakenly thought Dash was using the nom de plume Calvin. Apologies for my distraction (although a part of me heard Dash’s voice in Calvin’s comments). I hope my misreading is not indicative of the value of what follows.

Dash’s comment is worth some reaction. I have written a little on his recent book elsewhere, and can send the text to interested readers. Overall, although he claims to be critical, Dash’s tone reflects great admiration for Sleeman and his cronies. His stated subtlety is entirely too subtle if the goal is to debunk the Thuggee story in favor of a “true” account, for his own account repeats and restates a huge amount of material that has been propping up the mythology of Empire for a long time. Suggesting the book hasn’t been read is disingenuous. It is possible to read it very carefully, as I have done, as Kerim has also evidently done, and as have several other scholars with whom I have discussed it, and to come away with the impression that Dash feels Sleeman was a heroic figure, that India was a land of darkness, that the Empire shone a bright light, and that we should all be grateful for the suppression of Thuggee whatever its unsavoury legacy. I haven’t yet see Wagner’s book published this year, but Dash’s evidence has all been well circulated in scholarly publications going back to the late 1960s, and of course before that for over 100 years in the Thuggee publicity, official imperial history, and the hagiography surrounding the thug hunters. It’s odd he doesn’t take on board the academic criticism for it poses a serious challenge to the other materials just mentioned.

There’s nothing new here, despite the claims to archival research; it is rather a tale well-told, an enjoyable read. The feeling is uncanny as one becomes more familiar with the material; Dash is recycling accounts culled from a variety of sources, but all in service to the larger project of thug hunting. There is almost no dissent, no deviation from this grand project, and indeed in Dash’s account Sleeman’s solitary genius causes the whole thing to cohere. There’s more to say about this, and indeed the field of scholarly Thug Studies has produced a formidable criticism well worth serious attention on a large number of Dash’s points. By debunking the “revisionists” in his Author’s Note, Dash makes a gesture towards this work, but he only gets as far as Parama Roy. Roy is probably the most poststructuralist of all the Thug scholars, and so represents a flank that can be more or less easily targeted. But there are many other positions closer to the center, and almost all would, I feel, disagree with Dash’s celebration of the anti-Thuggee campaign as a victory for Enlightenment in India. All would equally recognize that to take the archive designed to trap Thugs as a kind of “objective” database will produce a distorted view of the historical phenomena in question. Historians have engaged such issues of representation, prejudice and accuracy, but few are cited in Dash’s references. Some of those who are cited are not engaged in the text. Dash occasionally suggests the Thug hunters were prejudiced according to the blinkered views of the day, but he rarely if ever entertains more substantial challenges to the veracity of the Thug records or the perspective under which they were first recorded in the 1830s. I asked an academic audience last summer if they were familiar with Dash’s recent book; someone stood up and said, “You mean, Dash’s ancient book?” referring I presume to the archaic quality of both the sentiment and the historiographically uncritical method.

The main reason for engaging this work, as Kerim notes, is the continued reliance on the T&D model of collective guilt by association to brand the ex-Criminal Tribes today. Their continuing surveillance by police and the tremendous social stigma they face are the “true” legacies of the Thug story. It may seem more productive to engage Thuggee as myth rather than fact to explain the longevity of the perception.

Comments welcome.

Henry Schwarz

Merry Christmas,

Henry Schwarz

“You seem to be having difficulty distinguishing between genealogy and genes.”

In my previous comment I specifically wrote that this was a mistake (on Roy’s part, not mine). You had better start reading comments before replying to them. This is your second warning.

“I have seen nothing in the literature”

I guess you haven’t seen Sleeman’s extensive genealogical charts? However, I think it is a mistake for Roy to read later theories of criminal inheritance back into the Thuggee literature. It would be more accurate to say “a family affair” and leave it at that.

“Is periodic random murder by strangulation somehow a valid expression of culture BTW?”

Careful … There is no legitimate basis for imputing such a statement from the above post. Continued remarks like this will have you banned from this site.

I have seen nothing in the literature that suggests that the British believed that Thuggee was anything other than a religious cult. The claim that Thuggee was a phenomenon that was widely believed to be an expression of genetic predilection sounds like liberal polemics. Is periodic random murder by strangulation somehow a valid expression of culture BTW?