The Thuggae

The Thuggae (Thugs) were a secret society in India, who dedicated their lives to ritualistically strangling and burying victims as sacrifices to Kali, often in a way that specifically included first gaining their trust and confidence, and sometimes coming together in groups to perform a mass-murder. Parents initiated children into the order. It's not clear how they were founded, but they existed as an organised fraternity by the 13th century CE and were eradicated in the 1830s. They believed that the killings kept the world in balance, and the victims and the Thuggae themselves were assured places in the afterlife for the performance._1,2,3

Alternative spellings include Thugs, Thuggae, Thuggees, or the Phansigars₃.

1. For Kali, for Balance, for Paradise
2. Timeline (13th-19th century)
3. The Targets
4. Links

1. For Kali, for Balance, for Paradise

The Thuggae worshipped the Hindu deity Kali, the Goddess of Destruction_2,3,4, who is engaged in a fight against Demons. If the demons are killed by shedding blood, more demons arise, and so, after many demons had been unintentionally created, Kali devised the scheme of strangulation and demanded that her followers help her₅, leading to the "strange cult of ritual murder as a sacrifice to Kali"₂. The Thugs need to kill, to keep Kali happy.

Sometimes, they would also take property of their victims. But the object was murder, not theft₄. It wasn't terrorism; the sect operated in complete secrecy, creating no messages, no publicity, no announcements, and had no political aims; the murders must 'be considered religious activity'. according to David C. Rapoport in "Religion and Terror: Thugs, Assassins, and Zealots" (1990)₅, for the purpose of keeping the world in balance, and in order to attain paradise in the after-life. Symbolic burial, prayers to Kali and special communion was taken by the Thuggae, especially if they had come together in a group to perform a mass-murder₄.

Religion and Terror: Thugs, Assassins, and Zealots₁ states that "even the more conservative estimates reckon that the Thugs were responsible for at least thirty thousand murders a year for the last three centuries of their existence - somewhere around a million deaths. They weren't political, and operated in complete secrecy. Without publicity, or even much of a pattern, their movement could not attempt to achieve political aims. Their motive was their religious views of the world"₁.

"The children of the Thugs were initiated into the tradition early by a carefully calculated process"₁.

2. Timeline (13th-19th century)

#British_Empire #india

David C. Rapoport₁ says the Thugs 'may have exited in the time of Herodotus'₅ (5th century BCE) and although Oliver Thomson₂ states that "in the third or fourth century" the Thuggae were formulizing and developing their society and their methods₂, most other authors place them hundreds of years later, at least. They were described in 1356 by Ziau-d din Barni in The History of Firoz Shah, who describes them as a fraternity₃, at a time where 1000 were arrested. Therefore, they were organized and established by the 14th century, so probably existed since the 13th century CE.

Still, in the 1700-1800s, an epidemic of gang robberies and murders were caused by "assassination cults the Thugs and Pindari"₆.

“By the fifteenth century, the Thuggee were a full-blown society of secret assassins for hire [and] over the course of the next three hundred years, bands of Thuggee killed not just thousands of people across India, but hundreds of thousands.”

"Secret Societies: The Complete Guide to Histories, Rites, and Rituals"
Nick Redfern (2017)₃

Officers of the British Empire in India in the early 1800s instigated a long campaign of infiltration, exposure and eradication against the Thuggae, destroying them as a secret organisation, and leaving only fragments untouched_1,3. With Indian society then aware of this secret threat, it seems likely that the Thuggae lost the ability to maintain hereditary recruiting, and dwindled away.

3. The Targets

#hindu_violence #religious_violence

“The moral code of the Thuggee tribe in India regarded murder by strangulation of non-Thuggee men (not women) as a virtue.”

"A History of Sin" by Oliver Thomson (1993)₂

There was a ritualistic, repetitive skill involved, wherein victims or communities were intentionally befriended, and time was taken to built up trust, and normally, the bodies were buried properly afterwards. Selected victims were always male, although, they would also kill witnesses if they had to, even if they were women. They would not target the poor, the homeless and anyone else associated with Kali - "lepers, the blind, and the mutilated"₁. 'Pilgrimages' would see tens or hundreds of Thuggae come together to infiltrate a location (often in separate groups so as to not look imposing), where they prepared a mass-murder.

The Thuggae targeted "people with property"₇ during an era where the masses had no land₇. But although Indian civilisation in the last years of the 1700-1800s saw social turmoil "parallelled by the systematic exploitation of India by the British" coincided with an 'epidemic' of murder from the Thugs₆, Europeans themselves (including the British) were deemed off-limits as targets.

“Skilled in the field of not just assassination, but also deception and camouflage, the Thuggee often disguised themselves as members of the Indian Army and as priests.”

"Secret Societies: The Complete Guide to Histories, Rites, and Rituals" by Nick Redfern (2017)₃

“Usually, close contacts of this sort create bonds between [people] but the Thugs seemed indifferent to [emotions] for the testified that neither pity nor remorse prevented them from acting. They believed that the victim himself benefitted from his death because he would enter paradise. [...]

The goal of the individual Thug was to survive for as long as possible so that he could keep killing. Each was supposed to have averaged three murders for every year of his life. [...] No property was taken without first killing and burying its owner; and when religious omens were favorable, many were murdered even when it was obvious that they had no property.”

"Religion and Terror: Thugs, Assassins, and Zealots" by David C. Rapoport (1990)₁