Thuggee

Summary

Thuggee was a phenomenon of highway robbery in the Indian subcontinent that saw gangs of thugs traverse the region murdering and robbing travellers, often by strangling. During the British colonial era, thuggee was represented and popularised as a secret pan-Indian fraternity of ritual stranglers with ancient origins, motivated by fanaticism and bloodlust. This representation has come under intense scholarly criticism since the 1950s, with historians' reinterpretations generally contesting the significance of religion to thuggee and viewing the thugs as more or less ordinary criminals, or thuggee as a type of banditry.