The Country Is Full Of Horrible Tales
About The Achievements Of The Thugs, Accomplished In The Honor Of
This Goddess.
These tales are too recent and too fresh in the
popular memory to become as yet mere highly-colored legends.
They are mostly true, and many of them are proved by official
documents of the law courts and inquest commissions.
If England ever leaves India, the perfect suppression of Thugism
will be one of the good memories that will linger in the country
long after her departure. Under this name was practised in India
during two long centuries the craftiest and the worst kind of
homicide. Only after 1840 was it discovered that its aim was
simply robbery and brigandage. The falsely interpreted symbolical
meaning of Kali was nothing but a pretext, otherwise there would
not have been so many Mussulmans amongst her devotees. When they
were caught at last, and had to answer before justice, most of
these knights of the rumal - the handkerchief with which the operation
of strangling was performed - proved to be Mussulmans. The most
illustrious of their leaders were not Hindus, but followers of
the Prophet, the celebrated Ahmed, for instance. Out of thirty-seven
Thugs caught by the police there were twenty-two Mahometans. This
proves perfectly clearly that their religion, having nothing in
common with the Hindu gods, had nothing to do with their cruel
profession; the reason and cause was robbery.
It is true though that the final initiation rite was performed in
some deserted forest before an idol of Bhavani, or Kali, wearing a
necklace of human skulls.
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