In the 1830s the “Thug” was synonymous with multiple murder. He was a figure of horror and nightmare who had crept out of India and, in the more sensational literature of the period, was wandering through the cities of the West. It was estimated at the time that the devotees of Thugee murdered as many as 50,000 victims a year; their crimes were more heinous because they killed out of conviction rather than greed. They celebrated what was termed a “hideous religion of murder”, a form of human sacrifice in which the strangulated bodies were offered as a tribute to the gods of the Hindu pantheon.

In his excellently written and wellresearched book, Thug: The True Story of India’s Murderous Cult, Mike Dash deflates some of these quasiromantic myths. Yet he is also careful to point out that the Thugs were in many senses unique among killers. All of them “invariably murdered their victims before robbing them”. There were also families of Thug murderers, some of them apparently stretching back for several centuries. This was a culture of killing; whether it was provoked by nature, or by nurture, is an open question.

The Thugs were certainly proficient in their trade. A length of cloth was twisted around the neck, while the knee of the murderer was pressed into the victim’s back. There is a charming photograph here of Thugs demonstrating their skills. The bones of the body were then broken, and the sinews cut with a knife; this was designed to pack the corpse into the smallest possible shape. Before he or she was buried, an incision was made in the belly so that the body would not become bloated with the gases of putrefaction and thus disturb the concealed resting place.

Sometimes, for good measure, the eyes were gouged out, perhaps acting on the superstition that the image of the murderer was imprinted on the victim’s eyes. Their precautions were sensible enough. These were killings which, according to one English magistrate in Hindustan, were conducted “in circumstances which defied detection”.

This kind of activity must have something to do with the territory and the local terrain. The weather of the sub-continent is relentless, with monsoons and burning sun and baking winds. One of the centres of Thugee was a wilderness of ravines, of bare rocks and cliffs, of crevasses and gorges. Extreme conditions breed extreme behaviour.

The widespread killings must also be connected with economic and social circumstance, most notably the growing extent of British rule in India. Dash is very good on the history of imperial power in India, from the beginning of coastal trading by the East India Company to the piecemeal conquest by an advanced military force.

Yet it is clear that it cannot all be blamed upon the British. The sub-continent had for a thousand years, according to Dash, been “plagued by highwaymen and thieves”. In his account it was a national tradition embellished by song and story, with the Thugs themselves as the principal beneficiaries of legend; they became local heroes, with their killing sprees given admiring titles such as the Sixty Soul Affair and the Murder of Forty. Dash records that their name is first found in ancient Sanskrit texts, and for many centuries it was used as a token of a robber or an impostor. In the early 19th century they combined both of these roles, inveigling themselves by deceit into a company of travellers and then killing them all without compunction.

The first of them to be identified, and the first to appear in the public records, was a 20-year-old named Gholam Hossyn, who confessed to 90 murders. The local magistrate was impressed as much by the young man’s nonchalance as his appetite. He was also startled by the fact that the existence of these organised and discriminating killers had never before been detected. It became clear that the Thugs considered themselves to be vastly superior to the common run of criminals and murderers, who were generally known as dacoits; they were more skilful, more ingenious and far less likely to be caught. As the leader of one Thug gang vaingloriously put it: “If a banker’s treasure was put before me and entrusted to my care, though in hunger and dying, I would scorn to steal. But let a banker go on a journey, and I would certainly murder him. Dacoits and robbers are contemptible. I despise a dacoit. Let him come before me!”

They were also traditionalists with a strong sense of family honour. It seems that the first Thugs had arrived in Hindustan in the 17th century, and that there were now hundreds of Thug households practising the skills and methods of their venerable ancestors. Gholam Hossyn believed, for example, that his lineage stretched back to the time of Alexander the Great.

The British authorities were at least partially successful, after the revelations of Gholam Hossyn, in identifying and arresting certain Thugs. They sent out troops to extirpate them from the territories of the East India Company. But such an old native tradition was not to be uprooted so easily. In many cases the Thugs returned after a prudent period of withdrawal. They also continued their activities unchecked in the native states, where there were no army or police to hinder them.

They tended to be nomadic, congregating in groups or splitting apart as they wished. The gangs were made up of both Muslims and Hindus. Some members of each gang were scouts, some were stranglers, and some were “hand-holders” who pinioned the victim. There were even specialist grave-diggers and the pick-axe, with which the graves were dug, was dedicated to Kali, the six-armed Hindu goddess of destruction. The deadly implement was itself venerated. If it ever fell to the ground the grave-digger was immediately suspended from his office, and the gang returned homeward.

Some Thugs were suitably disguised so they might better introduce themselves to a party of travellers before leading them into the fatal ambush. These impersonators were described as “being mild and benevolent of aspect, and particularly gentle, courteous and obliging”. They might travel with their intended victims for days, or even weeks, before taking them courteously and quietly to their deaths.

But most praise was reserved for the expert strangler, who needed to despatch his victim in complete silence and at great speed. They were generally dead before they hit the ground. The stranglers could feel and hear the last breath leaving the body, as they clutched it in an intimate embrace. They needed “a ruthless, cold-blooded determination that comes naturally to few if any men”, according to Dash, and those who proved excellent in their work attained a reputation that could last through generations.

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