The thugs have been one of the most lasting images in the portrayal of India in Western imagination. Although several scholars have questioned the authenticity of the information contained in the thug archive, that is, the corpus of colonial knowledge about the thugs, Martine van Wœrkens and Tihanyi (The strangled traveler: colonial imaginings and the thugs of India. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2002) and Macfie (Rethinking Hist 12(3):383–397, 2008) argue that the very phenomenon as it was known to the British, was an orientalist construct. However, though the orientalist and romantic genesis of the thug imagery has been well established, the precise nature, reasons, and implications of the same largely remain “terra incognita”. This article examines the discovery of the thugs and analyzes parts of the thug-archive through the concept of the monster as elaborated by Mary Douglas (Purity and danger: an analysis of concepts of pollution and taboo. Routledge, New York, 1966), Victor Turner (“Betwixt and between: the liminal period in rites de passage”. The forest of symbols. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1967) and Michel Foucault et al. (Abnormal: lectures at the Collège de France, 1974–1975. Picador, New York, 2003), and establishes the thug as an epistemological monster emerging from the cracks and gaps in colonial information gathering mechanisms that arose as a result of the changing nature of the Indian “state” and the employment of alien categories for demographic knowledge production. The key question here is: how can we explain the sudden appearance of thugs in the colonial archive in the 1830s and the disproportionate interest of the administration in eradicating them? This article analyzes the journalistic and legal discourse surrounding the thugs in the nineteenth century and tries to demonstrate how the notion of the “monster” can act as a methodological tool in explaining the efforts of the Thug Department. The argument is then concluded through an investigation into the implications of the discovery of the thugs for the teleology of Indian history and the consequence of “othering” tribal and other anomic populations in the new Weberian state that the colonial and post-colonial regimes envisioned to establish.

It is well-known that the relationship between the colonial State and the Tribes in nineteenth century India had been particularly conflict-ridden and interrupted by periodic ‘insurrections’ or rebellions. This paper studies the relationship between the pre-colonial Mughal State and its tribes and juxtaposes it against the colonial state’s management of the Khonds and the Santals, and explores what can be known about the nature of the nineteenth century ‘Indian’ state that is fundamentally different from its earlier avatars. Employing police reports and legal court files, this paper concludes, that the uniqueness of the colonial State lay in its unilateral interactions with the tribes that is a product of the transition from a state that exercised ‘narrative sovereignty’ over its territories to one that aspired to enforce ‘actual sovereignty.’ This categorical change in the nature of the state, this paper argues, employing Marshall Sahlins’ ‘possible theory of history,’ caused structural changes in the tribe-state relationship—the breakdown of which then became irreconcilable and the tribes reacted by performing rituals such as the meriah and the bitlaha which now assumed political functions. These rituals in their novel incarnation earned the label of ‘insurrection.’

It is a well-known principle in philosophy that to define the self, cultures have traditionally relied on defining their other. However, defining the ‘self’ and the ‘other’ in a complex ethno-linguistic milieu such as South Asia has traditionally not been very easy. Earlier research by Romila Thapar (1971) and Aloka Parasher-Sen (1978) have demonstrated how a variety of ancient texts have used the category of mleccha in Sanskrit or malikkha in Pali to refer to the ‘other’ as recognized vis-a-vis the ‘Hindu’ self. However, not only do Thapar and Parasher-Sen both highlight the inconsistencies in the use of the term, they also fail at locating a precise theory of ‘othering’ employed in ancient India. This paper, uses a variety of Sanskrit sources in formulating a ‘theory of othering’ that can be effectively demonstrated to have been operative as evident from the Mahabharata and in Mauryan India. Finally, it also offers insights into the nature of inclusion operative in this paradigm of othering and explains this using the case study of Bhima’s marriage to Hidimba in the Mahabharata.

Why Europe grew rich and ‘Asia’ became poor is the substance for the fiercely contested ‘Great Divergence’ debate where the prevailing Eurocentric view posits that European exceptionalism was responsible for the former’s success. The essence of the picture painted in the arguments against ‘oriental states’ is a despotic and extractive one that hinders commercial activities. This paper tries to address this debate through looking at the nature and role of Mughal the administrative machinery and challenge image of despotic hegemony. In order to address the issue of commensurability of sources, the present author has only used European accounts and correspondences produced by the English East India Company and the Dutch VOC. The paper argues that the Eurocentric perspective essentially paints an ahistorical picture of the Mughal state by investigating European responses to the deaths of important Mughal emperors (Jahangir, Shah Jahan and Aurangzeb) and the economic consequences following it. Additionally, this paper also provides evidence of a strong role of bankers in the internal commercial system further undermining the image of the extractive state and supporting the ‘Great Firm theory’ of Karen Leonard. In conclusion, it is argued that the European-exceptionalism theory is fundamentally based on an orientalist imagination of South Asia and essentially suffers from the pitfalls of the ‘historiography of decline’ that plague the history of other ‘Asian’ empires such as the Qing and the Ottomans. Eighteenth century South Asia shows considerable similarities with early modern Europe and its commercial viability and agility does not appear to be dependent on the central government or the abilities of the emperor.

The thugs have been one of the most lasting images in the portrayal of India in Western imagination. Although several scholars have questioned the authenticity of the information contained in the thug archive, that is, the corpus of colonial knowledge about the thugs, Martine van Wœrkens and Tihanyi (The strangled traveler: colonial imaginings and the thugs of India. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2002) and Macfie (Rethinking Hist 12 (3):383–397, 2008) argue that the very phenomenon as it was known to the British, was an orientalist construct. However, though the orientalist and romantic genesis of the thug imagery has been well established, the precise nature, reasons, and implications of the same largely remain “terra incognita”. This article examines the discovery of the thugs and analyzes parts of the thug-archive through the concept of the monster as elaborated by Mary Douglas (Purity and danger: an analysis of concepts of pollution and taboo. Routledge, New York, 1966), Victor Turner (“Betwixt and between: the liminal period in rites de passage”. The forest of symbols. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1967) and Michel Foucault et al. (Abnormal:lecturesattheColleg̀edeFrance,1974–1975.Picador,NewYork,2003),and establishes the thug as an epistemological monster emerging from the cracks and gaps in colonial information gathering mechanisms that arose as a result of the changing nature of the Indian “state” and the employment of alien categories for demographic knowledge pro- duction. The key question here is: how can we explain the sudden appearance of thugs in the colonial archive in the 1830s and the disproportionate interest of the administration in era- dicating them? This article analyzes the journalistic and legal discourse surrounding the thugs in the nineteenth century and tries to demonstrate how the notion of the “monster” can act as a methodological tool in explaining the efforts of the Thug Department. The argument is then concluded through an investigation into the implications of the discovery of the thugs for the teleology of Indian history and the consequence of “othering” tribal and other anomic populations in the new Weberian state that the colonial and post-colonial regimes envisioned to establish.