7/31/23, 10:38 PM Thuggees – The Cult Assassins of India | Ancient Origins

UPDATED 16 JULY, 2022 - 15:01 JOANNA GILLAN

Thuggees – The Cult Assassins of India

Thuggees, from the Sanskrit word meaning “concealment”, were an organized gang of professional assassins –
sometimes described as the world's first mafia – who operated from the 13th to the 19th centuries in India. Members of
the fanatical religious group, who were infamous for their ritualistic assassinations carried out in the name of the Hindu
Goddess Kali, were known as Thugs, a word that passed into the English language during the British occupation of
India.

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Colored drawing of two Thuggees pointing upwards to the sky to distract their victim, whilst another creeps up behind
ready to strangle him. ( Public domain )

The Thuggee Assassins of India

Thuggees worked by joining groups of travelers and gaining their trust before surprising them in the night and typically
strangling them with a handkerchief or noose. By using this quick and quiet method, which left no blood and required no
special weapons, the Thuggees would then rob their victim and bury them carefully.

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Their crimes involved a high degree of teamwork and co-ordination both during the infiltration phase and at the moment
of attack. Each member of the gang had a special function, from luring travelers with charming words, acting as a
lookout, or taking the role of the killer. Some estimates claim that the Thuggees were responsible for approximately two
million deaths. However, estimates vary widely since there is no reliable source to confirm when the practice first began.

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Indian encampment of Thugees circa 1857. ( Archivist / Adobe Stock)

The First Record of the Thuggees

The first known record of the Thugs as an organized group in India, as opposed to ordinary thieves, is in Ẓiyāʾ-ud-Dīn
Baranī's History of Fīrūz Shāh dated to around 1356. Although the Thugs traced their origin to seven Muslim tribes,
Hindus also appear to have been associated with them from an early period.

The Hindu members of the Thuggees worshipped the goddess of destruction and renewal, Kali. At least some of them,
this formed the basis of their actions, as it is said that they believed they were helping Kali maintain the worldly balance
of good and evil. However, their Hindu faith was not very different from their contemporary non-Thugs, and the fact that
some Thugs were Muslims also complicates the issue.

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Drawing of “Hindoo Thugs and Poisoners” by William Carpenter from Illustrated London News 1857. ( Public domain )

There is evidence, however, that all Thuggee assassins were united by common superstitions and rituals, which led to
the gang being branded a cult or sect. The fraternity possessed a jargon of their own, known as ramasi, as well as
certain signs by which its members recognized each other in the most remote parts of India.

They were also bound by a set of rules, such as the prohibition to steal a person’s property without killing them in
accordance with ritual first. Brahmans were not killed because of their purity, killing of the sick was considered an
unworthy sacrifice, and women were not killed because they were considered to be incarnations of Kali.

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Kali, goddess of destruction and renewal, brandishing her sword and a severed head as she tramples her consort Shiva
underfoot.  (Public domain )

The Fraternity of Thuggees

Membership to the fraternity of Thuggees was often through hereditary lines, passed down from father to son. Others
trained with a guru, similar to an apprenticeship, or tried to align themselves with other Thugs in the hope of being
recruited. Sometimes the children of travelers who had been killed were then groomed to become Thugs themselves, as
the presence of children would help allay suspicion.

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The Thuggee assassins were eventually suppressed by the British rulers of India in the 1830s, after the implementation
of the Thuggee and Dacoity Suppression Acts, which stated: “It is hereby enacted, that whoever shall be proved to have
belonged, either before or after the passing of this Act, to any gang of Thugs, either within or without the Territories of the
East India Company, shall be punished with imprisonment for life, with hard labor.”

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A number of strategies were implemented to aid the success of the new laws, including incentives for gang members to
turn in their peers, and wide dissemination of reports regarding Thuggee behavior to educate and warn travelers and the
general population.

Thuggees typically strangled their victims during the night. Image from ‘Confessions of a Thug’ (1839) by Philip
Meadows Taylor. (Public domain)

According to the Guinness Book of Records , Behram the Indian Thug, holds the record as the most prolific murderer.
As the leader of a Thuggee cult in Oudh district, modern-day Uttar Pradesh in India, at his trial in it was established that,
between 1790 and 1840, he had strangled at least 931 victims. After his arrest, in 1840 Behram and his family were
executed in Jabalpur.

Finally, after at least six centuries of wreaking havoc across India, the days of the Thugs came to an end. Today, their
reputation lives on in their name, a term which is now widely used throughout the world to refer to aggressive and violent
young criminals.

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Top image: A group of Thuggees strangling a traveler on a highway in India in the early 19th century. Source: Public
domain

By Joanna Gillan

References
Advameg Inc. No date. “The Thuggee” in Encyclopedia of the Unusual and Unexplained . Available at:
http://www.unexplainedstuff.com/Secret-Societies/The-Thuggee.html

Bhattacharya, S. 2020. “Monsters in the dark: the discovery of Thuggee and demographic knowledge in colonial
India” in Palgrave Commun  6, 78. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-020-0458-8

Gandhi, L. 18 November 2013. “What A Thug's Life Looked Like in 19th Century India” in NPR. Available at:
https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2013/11/18/245953619/what-a-thugs-life-looked-like-in-nineteenth-
century-india

Perry, A. 22 July 2002. “Killing for 'Mother' Kali” in Time Magazine . Available at:
https://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,322673,00.html

The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. 20 July 1998. “Thug” in Britannica. Available at:
https://www.britannica.com/topic/thug

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