- Hardcover: 288 pages
- Publisher: Constable; First Edition edition (19 Sep 2002)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 1841193933
- ISBN-13: 978-1841193939
- Product Dimensions: 23.4 x 15.8 x 3.4 cm
- Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 507,912 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
| |||||||||||||||
Did you know you can trade in your old books for an Amazon.co.uk Gift Card to spend on the things you want? Plus, get an extra £5 Gift Certificate when you trade in books worth £10 or more before June 30, 2012. Visit the Books Trade-In Store for more details. |
Product details |
More About the Author
Product Description
Review
On a journey both muddled and strange, travel writer Rushby quests to India in curiosity about the Thugs who were reputed to kill travellers as a sacrifice to Kali and were eradicated during the 1830s and 1840s by a hero of the British Raj, William Henry Sleeman. With 100 sepoys, Sleeman hunted down more than 3,000 members of the supposedly murderous sect who were variously hanged, imprisoned or transported. Via Bollywood, the Yum Yum Hills and various surreal encounters, Rushby uncovers delusions and misconceptions until he concludes that there was no religious sect but a witch-hunt partly inspired by the threat posed by robbers to Britain's opium trade. Based more on Rushby's travel experiences than solid historical research, this thought-provoking book nonetheless rewrites an obscure episode of history while finding no black-and-white truths, but rather grey ones.
Sunday Times Culture Magazine, September 2002
'A remarkable book - part biography, part detective story, part social history...readable and at times rather profound.'
Tag this product(What's this?)Think of a tag as a keyword or label you consider is strongly related to this product.
Tags will help all customers organise and find favourite items. |
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
In my opinion Mr. Rushby is the greatest living travel writer!!
Having read his first three books several times I eagerly awaited this one. It did not disappoint. His mix of adventure, humour, characters, history along with his personal "inner" journey are presented in a wonderfully readable and intelligent style.
I find many travel writers boring after their first book. This guy never ceases to amaze me at the risks he takes in researching his story. You would have thought that he would learn his lesson! Thankfully he doesn't so his later books are as fresh as the first.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Last year as the only visitor that late afternoon of a haveli-museum in the Shekhavati town of Nawalgarh, I was accompanied by the person responsible for the museum who gave me interesting explanations. In one room puppets dressed in the traditional attire of the different castes were displayed and he made some sociological comments. In front of the display of the puppets of the Meena caste, his odd comment that this was a caste of thieves made me laugh, at that time I did find it so absurd that people were classified as criminals on basis of their birth...
However in this page-turner by Kevin Rushby I learned that this statement finds its historical origin in the notorious British Criminal Tribes Act of 1871, which might have been repealed in 1952 but was replaced that same year by the `Habitual Offenders Act'. In the 21st century in India about 60 million people, belonging to the `denotified tribes', are still discriminated and this simply on basis of their nomadic lifestyle.
The subtitle `Through India in Search of Bandits, the Thug Cult and the British Raj' indicates that this not one of the umpteenth travelogues whereby a Westerner visits India. Rushby investigates the myth of the thugs, a religious sect (hence the title of the book) rumoured to have killed over several centuries more than 2 million people in central India, until they were eradicated by the British in the mid-19th century. He sets off to southern India, where he tries to meet the notorious criminal Veerappan, hidden in the Tamil jungle. Rushby does not get a glimpse of the legendary murderer, responsible for the death of more than 120 people (`Children of Kali' was published in 2002, Veerappan was killed in October 2004 after a 14-year long hunt by a 750-strong special task force), however the reader does not mind as in the meantime very interesting observations are made. Rushby illustrates to have the above-average amount of guts and a gift to describe poignantly the sometimes hilarious/scary situations he finds himself in.
Descriptions of his journey are interspersed by very interesting titbits of information. When Rushby moves to central India and tries to compare the written historical testimonies of British people on the thugs with the memories of the local people, he is confounded by the absence of convincing proof and conflicting data. His investigation leads him to the conclusion that the thugs were not a hereditary religious cult of human sacrificers but most likely a legend created on basis of European prejudices of that time, started by the `thug-hunter' Sleeman and propagated by fellow Victorians. There was criminality in the region, but the culprits were probably the British colonists who started to cultivate opium and created the opportunities. The locally organized small-scale marauding groups were played up by the evangelical crusading tone of the British Indian administration of the 1830. Prejudices, for instance that crime was inbred and a hereditary feature would lead to the Criminal Tribes Act of 1871. The Salvation Army - yeah those of the soup kitchens - turned out to be zealots of social engineering who set up with messianic enthusiasm forced labour camps...
Reading this book has created an appetite for other work of Rushby, a writer who ventures where others fear to tread, who clearly has a sense of - situational and verbal - humour, who backs up his personal experience with research and also makes good observations - perhaps sometimes with a tendency for caricature and the hilarious - of the people he meets in this fascinating country.
However in this page-turner by Kevin Rushby I learned that this statement finds its historical origin in the notorious British Criminal Tribes Act of 1871, which might have been repealed in 1952 but was replaced that same year by the `Habitual Offenders Act'. In the 21st century in India about 60 million people, belonging to the `denotified tribes', are still discriminated and this simply on basis of their nomadic lifestyle.
The subtitle `Through India in Search of Bandits, the Thug Cult and the British Raj' indicates that this not one of the umpteenth travelogues whereby a Westerner visits India. Rushby investigates the myth of the thugs, a religious sect (hence the title of the book) rumoured to have killed over several centuries more than 2 million people in central India, until they were eradicated by the British in the mid-19th century. He sets off to southern India, where he tries to meet the notorious criminal Veerappan, hidden in the Tamil jungle. Rushby does not get a glimpse of the legendary murderer, responsible for the death of more than 120 people (`Children of Kali' was published in 2002, Veerappan was killed in October 2004 after a 14-year long hunt by a 750-strong special task force), however the reader does not mind as in the meantime very interesting observations are made. Rushby illustrates to have the above-average amount of guts and a gift to describe poignantly the sometimes hilarious/scary situations he finds himself in.
Descriptions of his journey are interspersed by very interesting titbits of information. When Rushby moves to central India and tries to compare the written historical testimonies of British people on the thugs with the memories of the local people, he is confounded by the absence of convincing proof and conflicting data. His investigation leads him to the conclusion that the thugs were not a hereditary religious cult of human sacrificers but most likely a legend created on basis of European prejudices of that time, started by the `thug-hunter' Sleeman and propagated by fellow Victorians. There was criminality in the region, but the culprits were probably the British colonists who started to cultivate opium and created the opportunities. The locally organized small-scale marauding groups were played up by the evangelical crusading tone of the British Indian administration of the 1830. Prejudices, for instance that crime was inbred and a hereditary feature would lead to the Criminal Tribes Act of 1871. The Salvation Army - yeah those of the soup kitchens - turned out to be zealots of social engineering who set up with messianic enthusiasm forced labour camps...
Reading this book has created an appetite for other work of Rushby, a writer who ventures where others fear to tread, who clearly has a sense of - situational and verbal - humour, who backs up his personal experience with research and also makes good observations - perhaps sometimes with a tendency for caricature and the hilarious - of the people he meets in this fascinating country.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
1 review
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
What's left of the Thugs?
13 Sep 2007
Format:Paperback
In this intricate, meandering and totally entertaining travelogue, the English journalist Kevin Rushby gives us a taste of criminality in modern India. Correctly starting from as far back as the English Raj's recognition and fight against the Thugs, he draws on memories of childhood readings, historical research, legends, modern fiction and present day interviews with criminals and policemen to paint a wide scenery of what criminality has matured to in the deeply ethical India.
The book starts as a literary historical research into the Thug cult (ritual killers that strangled strangers with a silken scarf in honour of the goddess Kali), that became so fascinating for all the lovers of adventures from the 1830's to 1952 (when John Master's "The Deceivers" was written). For those out there that identify in this kind of literature remember "Gunga Din" (1937), Eugene Sue's Feringhea in the "Wandering Jew", "The Confession of a Thug" by Meadow's Taylor (famous literary success of 1839, still in press). To find information in India, our Author starts from Bollywood interviewing actors and writers of gangster movies and moves on to the search for Veerappan, India's most famous bandit, turned separatist on the Tamil Nadu-Karnata border. Here he doesn't manage to meet the outlaw but speaks with people that have been kidnapped and gains many hints on the evolution of banditry into political interest in the Tamil separatist movement. Our hero then travels north in what once was the most Thug infested area (Madhya Pradesh). Here he visits the vestiges of Sleeman's (the great eliminator of the Thug cult) memory that have been amazingly well preserved. He visits Hyderabad, Nagpur, crosses the Namada Rivers, always describing the beautiful peaceful life of rural India and the monuments of the past. Among the many encounters he meets a fascinating girl he calls Mandy, that seems to act like a puzzling inspiration for our traveller to open his mind to new and different outlooks on the country and its culture. At one point he reaches almost the conclusion that the definition of a Thug cult might have been one of the many examples of Orientalism (E. Said, the preconceived idea of attributing defects to the East) tainted by a preconception of inherited criminality (Lombroso docet). The quest continues to Sagar (where most of the Thugs were executed), then to the Chambal Ravines and Jalaun until a fried sets up an interview with a gangster turned into a social worker, that really embodies the connection between politics and criminality. From the world of Sleeman Rushby passes to that of Kali, their goddess, visiting the Sangam, the holy confluence of the Ganges, Jamuna and Sarawasti rivers. Here he sees the temple of Brindachul with its man-monkeys and reflects of the sense of the goddess who actually represents among other human necessities that of a superior justice, a power over right and wrong, the mystical yearnings and violence of the dispossessed. Varanasi is the next step, where Rushby spends his time looking at sadhus and ghats and gives us insight into India's ancient Brahmin culture. Swimming the Ganga at dawn leaves its sign and then our hero goes to Kolkata (Kali's city) were he will meet a gang of Bengali drug dealers protected by a holy man they forage with hemp. The temple experience with the goad sacrifices is very strong and Kevin finally seems to identify with the bloodshed ritual and find an end to his search o criminality and evil. Atonement after sacrifice is just around the corner.
The description of the criminal phenomena in a foreign country is not easy, indeed it is a feat. However the intermingling of good and bad, past and present, sacred and profane, is typical of old countries. No marvel then, Mafia in Italy is just the same and we live in 2007, so Rushby's conscience of flow writing and apparently far fetched quest serve as a frame for describing modern day India's reality.
A very nice book for curious, literate readers.
The book starts as a literary historical research into the Thug cult (ritual killers that strangled strangers with a silken scarf in honour of the goddess Kali), that became so fascinating for all the lovers of adventures from the 1830's to 1952 (when John Master's "The Deceivers" was written). For those out there that identify in this kind of literature remember "Gunga Din" (1937), Eugene Sue's Feringhea in the "Wandering Jew", "The Confession of a Thug" by Meadow's Taylor (famous literary success of 1839, still in press). To find information in India, our Author starts from Bollywood interviewing actors and writers of gangster movies and moves on to the search for Veerappan, India's most famous bandit, turned separatist on the Tamil Nadu-Karnata border. Here he doesn't manage to meet the outlaw but speaks with people that have been kidnapped and gains many hints on the evolution of banditry into political interest in the Tamil separatist movement. Our hero then travels north in what once was the most Thug infested area (Madhya Pradesh). Here he visits the vestiges of Sleeman's (the great eliminator of the Thug cult) memory that have been amazingly well preserved. He visits Hyderabad, Nagpur, crosses the Namada Rivers, always describing the beautiful peaceful life of rural India and the monuments of the past. Among the many encounters he meets a fascinating girl he calls Mandy, that seems to act like a puzzling inspiration for our traveller to open his mind to new and different outlooks on the country and its culture. At one point he reaches almost the conclusion that the definition of a Thug cult might have been one of the many examples of Orientalism (E. Said, the preconceived idea of attributing defects to the East) tainted by a preconception of inherited criminality (Lombroso docet). The quest continues to Sagar (where most of the Thugs were executed), then to the Chambal Ravines and Jalaun until a fried sets up an interview with a gangster turned into a social worker, that really embodies the connection between politics and criminality. From the world of Sleeman Rushby passes to that of Kali, their goddess, visiting the Sangam, the holy confluence of the Ganges, Jamuna and Sarawasti rivers. Here he sees the temple of Brindachul with its man-monkeys and reflects of the sense of the goddess who actually represents among other human necessities that of a superior justice, a power over right and wrong, the mystical yearnings and violence of the dispossessed. Varanasi is the next step, where Rushby spends his time looking at sadhus and ghats and gives us insight into India's ancient Brahmin culture. Swimming the Ganga at dawn leaves its sign and then our hero goes to Kolkata (Kali's city) were he will meet a gang of Bengali drug dealers protected by a holy man they forage with hemp. The temple experience with the goad sacrifices is very strong and Kevin finally seems to identify with the bloodshed ritual and find an end to his search o criminality and evil. Atonement after sacrifice is just around the corner.
The description of the criminal phenomena in a foreign country is not easy, indeed it is a feat. However the intermingling of good and bad, past and present, sacred and profane, is typical of old countries. No marvel then, Mafia in Italy is just the same and we live in 2007, so Rushby's conscience of flow writing and apparently far fetched quest serve as a frame for describing modern day India's reality.
A very nice book for curious, literate readers.
Was this review helpful?
Let us know
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
