“The Confessions of a Thug”
and “The
Deceivers”
A Comparative study as Historical Novels
N. NARASIMHA RAMAYYA
The Deceivers is about the Thugs in
“They could only accept that the traveller
had vanished….snake bite, tiger’s fangs, cholera, something…..unless a missing
man was a jewel carrier. Then the bankers would take a hand. What had happened
to that fellow with his head on one side? Who was he? Who was All?”1
John Masters handles the sentimental
attitudes of people while they suffer from dichotomy of myth and realty. He
comments:
“Men ran up and crowded round the hole. The
earth flew, every few minutes fresh diggers jumped down to replace the men in
the pit. They handled the bones reverently as they uncovered them and placed
them out in a row, on the gross 2.”
William is a British officer in charge of
putting an end to thuggie and finally he grows with the Indian sentiments.
Masters evinces sympathy, with the labour
class. “The diggers dug with the end of their turbans flung
across their mouths and spat frequently. Many watched with lips tight and blue
eyes afire in the lamplight”.3 They exhumed not only the human bones
and rotten flesh but also the old idea of social corruption deeply buried in
the village outskirts. Though the bodies of the Sikh farmer and his son are not
found, it is an excavation of cruelty buried some two centuries ago pursued by
the head hunters and scalp hunters.
The Indian society is divided into two main
organisations: the aristocracy and the proletariat, one is to command and the
other is to obey. The English are super-aristocrats commanding both the
branches of the native society. The anarchy and hooliganism are inherent in the
Indian blood down the ages. Men and women become objects of terror. Master
describes in pathetic tones about a suttie at Bhadora:
“…..they reported that the woman still sat by her
pyre. Unknown hands had built a shelter over her before the rains came. Unknown
hands placed food beside her on leaf-plates and everyday filled a cracked jar
with water. In the dark she moved to the riverside, the police said. She kept
alive”. 4
Masters focuses criticism on the tradition of
suttie.
Suspicious characters are very common which
ruin the lives of man, people. Masters explains William’s efforts as futile and
adds:
“Most of the tales turned out to be rumours
and nothing more; a few were by-products of local feuds; the remainder had been
thought up out of the whole cloth. The patels, eager to please and impressed
with the gravity of the situation, seemed to feel that suspicion would fall on them
unless reports of strange
incidents were occasionally made for their areas”. 5
These lines indicate the atrocities of the
patels to save their skin. Masters entrusts a crucial duty of reformation to
William, the British officer. He passes satirical remarks on the mass murders
of people as though they were ordained to die for Kali. “The Goddess Kali, who
is the Destroyer Goddess of the Hindus, has given the roads of the world and all
who travel the roads, into the hands of her servants”. 6 The unevenness of man is
devoted by his “lopsided” ways.
Masters pays utmost attention to delineate
the abominable and brutal behaviour of the waylayers, and by and large to man;
He narrates:
“Here were the marks of the servants of
Kali-a weal round every throat,
the broken joints, the great wounds in chest and stomach. In these newly killed
victims the bellies gaped on and the entrails, bursting out, were heavy with
loose dirt and slimy with mucus. Cut stakes the points sharp and bloody had
been there in the pit with them and a log and a club. The thakur’s Necklace was
there, round his neck and the charm in it”.
Sometimes fiction is identified with
historical facts. Masters writes about the bandits and their turbulent hordes.
“Since 1818 that power had gone but small
bands of survivors still roamed the road, especially south of the
Nerbudda. And the uniform of the lancers were very dirty”.8
The highwaymen are a common menace to the peace-loving citizens in
Mandya district. The suffering of the poor is so common that at last everybody
resorts to endurance.
William remarks satirically at the Hinduism
in the novel which are none but the observations of John Masters himself. He
says:
“How can a rule of law flourish where people
call themselves ‘servants of Kali’ and kill because a goddess orders them to?”
9
The Thugs worshipped Kali and perpetrated
loot and arson in her name. They celebrate Dussehara promptly, a festival of “the season of war and travel.” The author
feels, sorry for lack of
humanism and deplores barbarianism. The novel takes a turn of fantasy: “Oh, there is a bat in the room!” 10
which will shriek of murders. The men of Kali are Thugs, the deceivers. Masters
seems to be identifying the Hinduism against the concept of benevolence
attributed to God and ignores the high philosophical norms.
The cruelty of Thugs is unlimited and their
ravishing behavior is described:
“The pit filled and became a welter of bloody
cloth, bursting entrails, and staring eyes. The flame of the lamp jumped as the
deceivers moved past it, each time lending the mangled pieces another jerky
moment of life. William held to a tree for support and strained to keep down
the vomit in his throat. Hussain crouching the other side of the pit under the
bamboo spires watched him” 11
Their inhuman tendency and vandalism have
been unleashed as if whole nature has become insecure, especially, in the
vicinity of
Time and again Masters repeats the
superstitions of the Deceivers in the novel. He describes:
“Yasin clasped his hands together, raised his
eyes and cried in a deep,
thrilled chant, ‘Great Goddess, as in old time thou vouchsafed one hundred and
sixty-two thousand rupees to Shora Naik and Kaduk Bunwari in their need, so we
beseech thee, fulfil our
desires’ ”.12
William also imitates this ritual and Yasin
drops a rupee into the hole he
has dug in the earth as a mark of offering to Kali.
The terror-stricken strangler attributes his weaknesses
to the ordinance of Kali and this is a sort of surrender to God. By the end of
16th chapter William is baffled by the Indian jugglery in the name of devotion.
Finally, Masters feels that the infection of superstition is on William, Yasin,
Hussain and everybody. William estimates that there were eight hundred
deceivers in and around Parsola. The English company was also helpless in its
short rule of nine years to curb
the Thugs. “He (William) had found Kali
on the road, and followed her, and found her in palaces and now in novels.
Kali’s hand truly lay over all
On the contrary, The
Confessions of a Thug (1839) is
an original work based on his investigation conducted by Meadows Taylor in
Thuggie at Bolarum, according to Brain Rowson. Prof. Ila Rao thinks:
“He (Meadows Taylor) makes it quite clear that
his motive was not to gratify a morbid taste in people for tales of horror and
crime but to expose fully the practices of the Thugs”. 14
The hero of this novel
is a real person working as an informer involved in a horrible profession of
killing the innocent people. But we find that plight and failure in life
prompted him to be a Thug. Amir Ali’s foster-father, Ismail, is the leader of
Thugs, who converts him into a Thug in spite of his education with a Maulvi who
taught him the Koran. It is the only revenge motive which induces Amir Ali to
enter the fatal organisation of Thugs. The whole destroyal of his family and
his own doom as a prisoner are forces behind which act and react on revenge
motive. The Thugs, however, have their own moral code even in killing. Amir
Ali, the famous Thug in this picaresque novel, confesses, though hid profession
is notorious. Yet it is a way of Hindu and Muslim unification, because they
have a common motivation of looting others.
Thuggie, according to
Meadows Taylor, is a concept of living in which there is no caste, no
community. The Hindus and the Muslims are brothers in it. Unlike in Masters,
there is a spark of chivalry in Thuggie in Meadows Taylor’s novel. Amir Ali’s
foster father wanted him to be chivalrous and noble even if it is Thugs’
profession. He is romantic in his approach to women. He attends the dance of
Zora in the Nawab’s court and goes to
Meadows Taylor describes
the historical scenes of Hyderabad–the Charminar, the Mecca Masjid, tombs and
domes, arches and mosques, embodying Muslim culture and Saracenic architecture.
The cheating of broken men was common even in those days in
Local geography
occupies a prominent place in The Confessions of a Thug. Badrinath’s
journey from
Meadows
At Elichpur we encamped
under some large tamarind trees, close to the Durgah of Rhyman Shah Doolah. It
was a quiet lovely spot. Below the Durgah ran a small river, which had its rise
in the neighbouring mountains, and over its stream the hallowed buildings of
the saint embowered in thick trees seemed to be the abode of peace and repose”.
15
The dire crimes of
Amir Ali in this novel have been copied by Masters. Yet Amir Ali is philosophical
and self-denied to some extent. He holds God responsible for his offences. He
is anxious to see his child with a Mullah. He is also superstitious and thinks
Bhowani has forsaken him. He adds, “Hope had fled, and despair had seized and
benumbed every faculty of my mind”. 16 He has repentance despite his savage method of living.”...You have
given a faithful portrait of a Thug’s life, his ceremonies, and his acts,
whilst I am proud, that the world will know of the deeds, and adventures of
Amir Ali, the Thug.” There is “verisimilitude” in
Unlike Meadows Taylor,
Masters uses narration as a source of “recreation” in The Deceivers (1952).
Prof. Ila Rao comments:
“In The Deceivers John
Masters also describes the practice and beliefs of the Thugs but his main idea,
however, is to bring out the full implications of the personal struggle of
William savage which is drawn on the lines of general Sleemaa’s report”. 18
Masters records the achievements of William savage, the hero trying to supports the Thugs, since he is concerned
with the history of a British
hero and not the gruesome deeds of Thugs, whereas Meadows Taylor deals
with the hero of Thugs. Hence the latter portrays the veracity of life
compelled by circumstances and with all sympathy for the human misery.
Notes and References
1 Joha Masters, The Deceivers. (London:
Michael Joseph, 1954), p. 59. 2 Ibid., p. 63. 3
Ibid., p.66. 4 Ibid., p. 86. 5 Ibid., p. 87. 6bid., p. 9l. 7 Ibid., p. 104. 8 Ibid., pp. 113-114. 9 Ibid., p. 130. 10Ibid., p. 137. 11 Ibid, p.170. 12Ibid., p.177. 13 Ibid, p.212 14 Dr.(Mrs.) Ila Rao, “The Other side of the
Picture, Meadows Taylor and John
Masters: A Comparison.” Triveni, November 1976, p. 20. 15 Meadows