Interrogating Body Politic: Reflections towards Thuggee Cult in British India

Abstract

Among all the socio-cultural institutions that sought explicit reformation under the British Raj, the institution of banditry—popularly known as Thuggee—has remained instrumental in constructing wild romantic imagination in colonial narratives. The present paper evaluates a variety of writing—fictional, historical, judicial or otherwise—and documents the way familial relationships in the cult takes a preconditioned homophobic yet non-erotic architecture that not only portrays British attitude towards the concepts of family and marriage, it also indicates, in principle, the Raj’s perception towards the human body in general. In evaluating colonial texts, I take into account the gendered structure of the texts on the Thuggee cult and show the Raj’s attitude towards intellectual and moral continence. In short, I argue that within the framework of a strict conjugal boundary state of criminality has been documented and has positioned itself to perform a gendered architecture of the human body.