“The Confessions of a Thug” and “The Deceivers”

A Comparative study as Historical Novels

N. NARASIMHA RAMAYYA

The Deceivers is about the Thugs in India. The novel is episodic and it has a number of episodes including Chandrasen’s adventures in Madhya Desha. Masters observes critically the Indian penal system in the following passage. He writes:

“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 ofthe 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 Gwalior.

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 India”.¹³

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 Hyderabad, the birthplace of Zora.

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 Hyderabad like today.

Local geography occupies a prominent place in The Confessions of a Thug. Badrinath’s journey from Hyderabad to Puttencheroo is an exmple how the Bannias followed the footsteps of cheats. Karawan, Begum Bazaar were popular secret dens. Chaddar Ghat Bazaar and the Resident’s Mansion were thoroughfares in the city. Masters follows the genre of describing the local scenes in his novels.

Meadows Taylor also recalls his past experiences to give a poetic effect and to end drabness. He writes:

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

Taylor’s description is more or less on personal experience whereas Masters is conjectural.

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 Taylor’s novel.

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 heroand 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 Taylor, The Confessions of a Thug (New York: Stein and Day Publishers, 1967), p. 157. ¹⁶ Ibid., p. 318. ¹⁷ Ibid., p. 338. ¹⁸ Mrs. Ila Rao, Op. cit., p. 26.