I tried to bring his face back to my mind, the face of that man, the one revealed to me by the attendant from under the sheet and the one who had talked to me the previous day from the stretcher. Both had been in a prone position. The face of a prone man is different when he is standing. And a man’s face when dead is very different from when he is alive. I could not conjure an image of him alive and standing. My memory failed me. Seshadri was now a faceless man, or rather one with a dubious, intangible face. That did nothing to ease my discomfiture.
I did a full swivel on my revolving chair. I got up and switched on all the lights in all the rooms. Turned all the fans on. This time yesterday, why, till even noon today, he was alive. With a roomal in his pocket perhaps, with all his confidence-earning tools of literature, politics, history and whatnot at hand. For a moment I thought of going back to the hospital to confirm he was really dead. To make sure the body that came out from the theatre was the same as the one I had seen the previous day. But how was I to make sure whether the dead man was the real Seshadri? Besides this letter, there was no other proof of Seshadri’s ever having been a thug. Who was the one that died, who was the one admitted into the hospital and who was the one who wrote the letter? If I leave behind all these and many other questions, everything boils down to a simple question: do thugs, does thuggee, exist today? I paced the length of the room several times, and every time I came back to the starting point and the letter lying on my table, I found myself edging closer to the belief that the things written on those pages were indeed true. The horrible reality came closer and closer as through a camera zooming in. Since the person with whom I was sharing the secret was dead, it was now wholly with me, on my side.
I made a cup of strong black coffee and drank it in a hurry. I made another. If only I had visited him yesterday, I thought. He would have shared some of his old memories with me and let me off. What he had written in the letter were not things that could be said face-to-face. Or, who knows, he might still have written the note, with instructions to hand it over to me only in the event of his death. It seemed it was imperative for him to let it all out. Imperative, as all his actions had been to him. He was carrying a centuries-old load on his shoulders. Even if he could carry it beyond his death, it was not possible for him to ferry all the doubts and scruples he had acquired. I was by that time convinced of the truth of every single word he had inked on the paper. Yes, there are thugs, and thuggee still exists.
I set out on a mission to collect information about thugs and thuggee. Books about thuggee in the libraries, the nineteenth-century files, case histories and records of trials in the archives, I gathered everything I could lay my hands on. I learnt to my horror that much of what Seshadri had said in his note was factually correct. According to some accounts, this group of people who had raised duping and killing their fellow beings to a level of faith and ritual had originated in central India. But in their empire-building days, the British discovered that the scourge had spread to the whole subcontinent and that some of the unseated rulers were aiding and abetting the thugs and the Pindaris, the more open plunderers, for their own sustenance. The campaign started by the British to suppress thuggee, which they considered essential to gain the confidence of the people unhappy with their corrupt erstwhile rulers, provided most of the material on the subject. Though the critics of orientalism had many reservations on the subject, no one could deny the existence of thuggee and the ritualistic character of the practice.
The trials of captured thugs revealed that thugs were organized into a large number of gangs or bands, each of whom had its own chief known as mukhia or sardar, intelligence gatherers and specialized operators, like stranglers, gravediggers, etc. The thugs claimed that they had a special ability by which they could recognize each other, whatever their region, language, caste or religion. There had never been any power struggle among the thugs themselves. Their intelligence work was so efficient that it inspired Sleeman to start his own intelligence network, or rather a counter-intelligence agency, to trap the thugs. It was this agency that later grew into the intelligence department of the British government. It is believed that when the Americans established their Central Intelligence Agency after the Second World War they took inspiration from this agency. So, it would appear that the modern intelligence world originated from the necessity to eliminate these killer gangs.
It was unimaginable for a cult spread out on such a vast scale geographically to have preserved the same set of rules, customs and practices, but that, it seemed, was a fact. Though they remained members of a cult, most of them, especially the gang leaders, were not full-time thugs. They functioned as patels of villages, sahukars, traders, priests of temples, clerks, landlords and ordinary householders when they were not on an operation. The day after the murder and looting, they would be back in their offices, shops, temples and homes. Some landlords, nobles and even kings who knew of the thugs operating in their domain protected them and in return received a share of the loot. So, thuggee went unchecked, and flourished without hindrance.
Colonel Sleeman, the officer responsible for the suppression of thuggee under the British administration, says that at the cantonment where he was stationed, the leader of the thugs of that district, Hari Singh, had moved about as a respectable merchant and he himself had had many dealings with him. He would obtain passes from Sleeman’s office to bring clothes from Bombay to trade; these passes were then used by Hari Singh to smuggle the loot he obtained by waylaying merchants and to sell them openly in the cantonment. Sleeman says he would never have known this had he not confessed, which he seemed to have done as a good joke. Bodies of several victims of this man and his gang lay buried within a few hundred yards from the main guard post of the cantonment as became apparent when Singh pointed out the graves in the coolest manner after his arrest.
I discovered that Seshadri was also right when he said that the cult of thuggee welded together Hindus and Muslims, and numerous castes within them, into a close brotherhood. Looting and the acquisition of wealth were the objectives behind thuggee, but the faith always came first. Hindus and Muslims united as brothers in it and there was no bad blood between them when it came to thuggee. Thugs believed that their profession had the sanction of the gods. The pleasures on this earth were small; the promise of everlasting pleasure in Indra’s kingdom for the Hindus and of the houris in the kingdom of Allah for the Muslims beckoned them. All this could be achieved only by following the path of thuggee as it was believed to be the glorious profession bestowed upon a few select men by Devi Bhavani and the ever-merciful Allah. To refuse the opportunity extended to man to move along this glorious path was nothing but blasphemy. The model of brotherhood that Allah has described was realized among the thugs. It was only among them that true belief and true brotherhood came together. Go where you will, and you will find homes open to you and a thug ordained by Allah to greet you, whatever be the language and custom of the place, the guru advised the novice at the time of inducting him into the faith. Be kind as you will to those around you, be affectionate to your friends, pity the poor, give alms to the needy, but always remember that you are a thug from now onward and have sworn relentless destruction on all those whom Allah may throw in your way, he cautioned.
Spies deployed by gangs of thugs passed on the information of merchants travelling with their merchandise. The chief with his gang then set out in the guise of merchants or government soldiers and joined them along the way. They earned the confidence of the merchants by discussing common concerns, sharing food and, ironically, sometimes even warning them against thugs in the area. They set up camp together in the forest and at night plied the victims with food and music. Meanwhile, the gravediggers of the gang, known as lughis, would get busy digging graves. Behind every person in the convoy including men, women, children, servants and cart drivers, a strangler would stand ready with his roomal. When the reception reached its peak with song, drama and music, the leader of the gang would suddenly utter a code phrase called jhirni such as Hukka bhar lao, Tambaku kha lo or Pani pilao. The stranglers, called bhurtotes, immediately sprang into action at lightning speed and threw their roomals around the necks of their victims. The struggle would last only a few seconds. Once the victims became still, their clothes were removed and the naked bodies pulled into the waiting graves. Such graphic descriptions furnished by the thugs during their trial and interrogation betrayed the thrill and sense of fulfilment they derived from the process. It was not easy for me to go through some of these narratives.