In the early 19th century central India was one of the most dangerous places a person could travel. Murders and robberies were incredibly common. Every year dozens, sometimes hundreds, of bodies were found in shallow graves near the highways. These unfortunate travelers were often the victims of gangs of murderous bandits. But who were these killers? The British authorities came to believe that these highway murders were the work of an India-wide network of cultists known as Thugs. But were the Thugs actually a coherent criminal sub-culture? Were they truly devoted to a religion based on human sacrifice? Or were real bandits being transformed into bloodthirsty fanatics by colonial propaganda? Tune-in and find out how poison milk, thug snitches, and the common enemies of all mankind play a role in the story.

Works Cited

Dash, Mike.Thug: The True History of India’s Murderous Cult. London: Granta Books, 2005.

Macfie, A. L. “Thuggee: an orientalist construction?” Rethinking History, 12(3), 383–397. https://doi.org/10.1080/13642520802193262

Taylor, Meadows. Confessions of a Thug. Oxford University Press, 1986.

Wagner, Kim A. Thuggee : Banditry and the British in Early Nineteenth-Century India. 1st ed. 2007., Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.

Wagner, Kim A. “The Deconstructed Stranglers: A Reassessment of Thuggee.” Modern Asian Studies, vol. 38, no. 4, 2004, pp. 931–63. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/3876674. Accessed 27 Jan. 2025.

Woerkens, Martine Van. The Strangled Traveler: Colonial Imaginings and the Thugs of India. Translated by Catherine Tihanyi. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2002.