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Children of Kali: Through India in Search of Bandits, the Thug Cult, and the British Raj
In the early 1800s, the greatest criminal gang in history operated throughout India. Its members were inspired by religious fanatics and came from many faiths, yet they worshiped one goddess, Kali. In her name, they murdered more than one million Indian travelers―all without spilling a drop of blood. Their weapon was the handkerchief, their sacrament sugar, and the gang was supposedly eradicated by the British in the 1830s. Today, a modern-day bandit named Veerappan is India's most-wanted man and most notorious criminal, responsible for more than one hundred murders. Some say he is a freedom fighter, others that he is a vicious killer. Still at large in the jungles of southwestern India, he avoids capture, his followers claim, by magical powers. In Children of Kali , Kevin Rushby researches these two criminal legends, both of which have been distorted and misused by those in power. As intrepid an investigator as he is an elegant writer, Rushby recounts his quest both to gain a meeting with Veerappan and to untangle the legends of the Thug Cult and the British policeman, William Sleeman, responsible for its suppression. He visits prisons and gangster hideouts, exploring the nature of crime and punishment in a country where good and evil may be as murky as the Ganges. A compelling blend of travel journalism and history, infused with Rushby's infectious spirit and with memorable characters, Children of Kali connects past with present and reexamines the legacy of the British Raj.
292 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2002
8 people are currently reading
263 people want to read
About the author
Kevin Rushby
10 books10 followersAfter I finished University (Newcastle) in 1982 I bought a one-way ticket to Cairo and set off travelling. Never having been abroad before I was understandably shocked on arrival in Cairo. Walking out the airport at 2 a.m. looking for a bus (no money for a taxi) I saw a line of people sleeping under their white sheets and joined them. Having built up a bit more courage later I ended up travelling through Egypt, Sudan, Central African Republic, Uganda and Kenya. Several months later I was back in Sudan as an English teacher, first in Darfur, later in the south. The latter was a particularly intense experience. Yambio, the small town in Western Equatoria, was cut off by the civil war for much of the time and I was alone, the only foreigner most of the time. I did vast bicycle rides, journeying deep into Zaire, visiting only remote areas as I had no paperwork or visa. There was no electricity, no running water, no post, no telephone. When I came to write Paradise (published May 2006) I often thought of that time - it seemed like an experiment in living even then. To jump out of one's own world into another, one that offered the most extreme version of the rural retreat ever.
Eventually the isolation was too much. I went to Kenya, then back to England to study education for a year (and in Madrid for some months), then to Yemen and Malaysia. It was in Kuala Lumpur that I started writing professionally, working for newspapers and magazines all across the Far East and South East Asia. Eventually, I went back to Yemen but the country fell apart in the Civil War of 1994 and I was back living in England for the first time in 12 years. Since then I've written books and articles, done some television, rather more radio. (Articles for the Guardian can be found on their website.) I'm now working on some book ideas to follow up Paradise.
- http://www.kevinrushby.com/biography.php
Eventually the isolation was too much. I went to Kenya, then back to England to study education for a year (and in Madrid for some months), then to Yemen and Malaysia. It was in Kuala Lumpur that I started writing professionally, working for newspapers and magazines all across the Far East and South East Asia. Eventually, I went back to Yemen but the country fell apart in the Civil War of 1994 and I was back living in England for the first time in 12 years. Since then I've written books and articles, done some television, rather more radio. (Articles for the Guardian can be found on their website.) I'm now working on some book ideas to follow up Paradise.
- http://www.kevinrushby.com/biography.php
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Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews
September 22, 2025
In parts the style reminded me of several present-day mainly TV documentary presenters. I will mention no names but they sometimes represent themselves as "professional adventurers". I am not certain what that means, though I expect it suggests a reluctance to have a job like the rest of us. You watch what they have produced and it is attractive, easy to view - or to read if a spin-off book comes out - yet at the end you ask yourself: What was the purpose of all that? It was never really historical, archaeological, scientific, sociological, or political. OK, there were bits of regurgitated text books or Wikipedia pages, however, overall it was a holiday show with some endurance trials between off-screen hotel breaks.
So, Children of Kali: Through India in Search of Bandits, the Thug Cult, and the British Raj. The root of the book is a search for the truth behind the Thugs and Thugee of India and the role played by William Henry Sleeman in, supposedly, bringing the Thug movement to an end in the 19th-century. The history is covered very well, though I doubt if much is the result of original research. The analysis of the modern descendants of the Thugs and their roles in India's increasingly Hindu-slanted politics speaks of an experienced journalist at work. And then there is the travelogue, which is interspersed throughout the book to give a break from the dry recital of historic facts.
If only Kevin Rushby could have concentrated on that it would have been a much livelier and enjoyable experience. Lots of people have written about their experiences on the Indian railways, negotiating the traffic in Mumbai or Kolkata - or any city in India - seeing the enormous division between wealth and poverty on the streets, and being overwhelmed by the numbers of people and all the noise and the smells and the unending bustle of business and survival. Rushby does justice to it all and adds the personal contacts: the arrogant Bollywood stars, the arrival of Maddy an English woman of ferocious independence, the angry professor demanding he should be allowed to read the teashop's newspaper before any white-skinned Englishman, the band of randy policemen stationed in an isolated backwater who have heard of discipline but are not quite sure if it applies to them - and many more characters.
The travel writing outweighs the history and by the end, on the banks of the Ganges, the Thugs get almost forgotten. Almost but not quite. There is a final little adventure among the drug-running goondas of Kolkata. If they have any allegiance to the Thugs of old they thankfully no longer strangle their victims, they just scare the poo out of them.
So, Children of Kali: Through India in Search of Bandits, the Thug Cult, and the British Raj. The root of the book is a search for the truth behind the Thugs and Thugee of India and the role played by William Henry Sleeman in, supposedly, bringing the Thug movement to an end in the 19th-century. The history is covered very well, though I doubt if much is the result of original research. The analysis of the modern descendants of the Thugs and their roles in India's increasingly Hindu-slanted politics speaks of an experienced journalist at work. And then there is the travelogue, which is interspersed throughout the book to give a break from the dry recital of historic facts.
If only Kevin Rushby could have concentrated on that it would have been a much livelier and enjoyable experience. Lots of people have written about their experiences on the Indian railways, negotiating the traffic in Mumbai or Kolkata - or any city in India - seeing the enormous division between wealth and poverty on the streets, and being overwhelmed by the numbers of people and all the noise and the smells and the unending bustle of business and survival. Rushby does justice to it all and adds the personal contacts: the arrogant Bollywood stars, the arrival of Maddy an English woman of ferocious independence, the angry professor demanding he should be allowed to read the teashop's newspaper before any white-skinned Englishman, the band of randy policemen stationed in an isolated backwater who have heard of discipline but are not quite sure if it applies to them - and many more characters.
The travel writing outweighs the history and by the end, on the banks of the Ganges, the Thugs get almost forgotten. Almost but not quite. There is a final little adventure among the drug-running goondas of Kolkata. If they have any allegiance to the Thugs of old they thankfully no longer strangle their victims, they just scare the poo out of them.
June 27, 2020
More of a travelogue than a history. Good read nonetheless.
January 17, 2021
Reread this and it’s still an entertaining book. A good mix of travel and history, although obviously it suffers from the glaring hole of not mentioning Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom once!
June 3, 2016
In Children of Kali, Kevin Rushby travels through India and its history in search of the truth behind the romanticized tales of the Thuggee Cult, a criminal gang inspired by the worship of the goddess Kali to which over one million murders by strangulation were attributed in the 1800s.
That's the story, anyway, and it's one Rushby buys into passionately, at least initially, as had many writers before him (Eugene Sue among them). After all, who could resist a tale of such frightening exoticism, of men who lured their victims with stories and songs before drugging them and choking them to death with a rumal (a/k/a, a killer handkerchief)? As the author digs deeper, however, it turns out that the narrative of the Thuggee may be just that - a story, one born of British racism and nurtured by the public's love of a salacious tale.
Unfortunately, Rushby's ferreting out of the truth surrounding the Thug only takes up about a third of Children, and the middle bit at that. The first section, in which he's still buying into the romanticized version wholeheartedly, he spends hunting down Koose Muniswamy Veerappan, a brigand and dacoit whom Rushby views as a modern-day Thug. The final section is spent in a search for more on Kali herself, or at least in a semi-spiritual pilgrimage to the Ganges and the Kali Ghat. The borders of the sections are a bit more fluid than I'm describing here - Rushby's fascination with modern Indian criminals crops up all the way through, as do bits and pieces of Thuggee history - but if you're in this for the examination of the Thuggee implied by the subtitle, you can skip to the middle and not miss anything.
Rushby's narrative suffers a bit in my mind comparison to the works of William Dalrymple, and I'd say that if you absolutely have to read a white British man's commentaries on India I'd stick with the latter. While the history Rushby dug up was fascinating, his travelogue at times became at time uncomfortable to read as he repeatedly suspects the Indians around him of nefarious intent. Now, a reasonable portion of that could be because in some instances he was actively seeking out criminals and more might be explained by the subconscious influence on the author of the British depiction of the Thuggee as an underground gang in which almost any (or every) Indian participated, but it still felt a bit squicky after a while.
Overall, I'd recommend this for the historical examination at its center more than for its occasionally dodgy travel narrative, but it's definitely worth it for debunking one of the greatest myths the British every perpetuated in India.
That's the story, anyway, and it's one Rushby buys into passionately, at least initially, as had many writers before him (Eugene Sue among them). After all, who could resist a tale of such frightening exoticism, of men who lured their victims with stories and songs before drugging them and choking them to death with a rumal (a/k/a, a killer handkerchief)? As the author digs deeper, however, it turns out that the narrative of the Thuggee may be just that - a story, one born of British racism and nurtured by the public's love of a salacious tale.
Unfortunately, Rushby's ferreting out of the truth surrounding the Thug only takes up about a third of Children, and the middle bit at that. The first section, in which he's still buying into the romanticized version wholeheartedly, he spends hunting down Koose Muniswamy Veerappan, a brigand and dacoit whom Rushby views as a modern-day Thug. The final section is spent in a search for more on Kali herself, or at least in a semi-spiritual pilgrimage to the Ganges and the Kali Ghat. The borders of the sections are a bit more fluid than I'm describing here - Rushby's fascination with modern Indian criminals crops up all the way through, as do bits and pieces of Thuggee history - but if you're in this for the examination of the Thuggee implied by the subtitle, you can skip to the middle and not miss anything.
Rushby's narrative suffers a bit in my mind comparison to the works of William Dalrymple, and I'd say that if you absolutely have to read a white British man's commentaries on India I'd stick with the latter. While the history Rushby dug up was fascinating, his travelogue at times became at time uncomfortable to read as he repeatedly suspects the Indians around him of nefarious intent. Now, a reasonable portion of that could be because in some instances he was actively seeking out criminals and more might be explained by the subconscious influence on the author of the British depiction of the Thuggee as an underground gang in which almost any (or every) Indian participated, but it still felt a bit squicky after a while.
Overall, I'd recommend this for the historical examination at its center more than for its occasionally dodgy travel narrative, but it's definitely worth it for debunking one of the greatest myths the British every perpetuated in India.
August 16, 2025
Thugee has always fascinated me. As depicted in Philip Meadows Taylor's Confessions of a Thug or John Master's The Deceivers - despite all their orientalism. Or later due to that most harrowingly memorable of passages in fiction which is the eerie depiction of a band of thugs chasing a central character in Shamsur Rahman Faruqi sahib's masterful magnum opus Kai Chand The Sar e Aasman. I have also looked more deeply and academically into it as well in my doctoral work as I examined the disruptive colonial impact on local laws and dispute resolution mechanisms. And I arrived also at many of the conclusions that Kevin Rushby does, though if anything mine is an even harsher indictment of what the colonists did and why.
Kevin Rushby's sets out for India, enchanted by Orinetalist notions of thugee. But then his field visits, interviews and close examination of documents from the time thuggee is said to have plagued parts of India, causes him to arrive at a much more dispassionate notion of things. At times, he still seems rater star-struck by colonial officers like William Henry Sleeman who is credited with eradicating thugee on a mass scale through his ruthless and methodical efforts. Thugee was described by him and his colonial contemporaries as a phenomenon to which were attributed from a million to two million deaths. Not just that, it was the macabre and utterly ruthless fashion of execution employed by individuals as well as bands of ordinary looking men using a combination of deception, ingratiation, drugs and silk handkerchiefs combined with their peculiar superstitions, secret language, clandestine practices and religious devotions that makes it all so gruesome and irresistibly fascinating for people of that time. It still hasn't quite lost its enigmatic appeal.
But after all his explorations and meditations Rushby concedes that ultimately eradication of thuggee was a witch-hunt which while it led to ostensible murderers being sent to the gallows, though often on sketchy evidence and following minimal process, many outrightly innocents men too were hanged. The movement for eradication led also to promulgation of draconian laws like the Criminal Tribes Act of 1871 which categorised entire tribes as criminal and deemed criminality as hereditary. All this mumbo jumbo was based on the pseudo-Darwinism of the time where fake scientific theories associated the size and shape of the cranium and other facial and psychical features to criminality. At the bottom of it all was also the colonial distrust of natives - the enemy within - especially wandering and itinerant people, and a desire to control and subjugate (and tax) them. By the time the book ends we have a fairly demystified notion of thuggee and much greater appreciation of the manipulative and exploitative colonial project.
The book is part popular history, part travel literature and on the whole it works quite well. At times Rushby is too gripped by the tendency to 'other' the natives he meets - his gora identity lurks as the benchmark for what is right, and he distrusts the local characters he encounters. But in his defense one of his primary projects here is also to explore the notion of villainy and thugs in modern India, at times finding parallels with old-style thuggee and at times not. Naturally he spends much of the time described in the book in pursuing modern day real and perceived villains - he meets for instance a Don in Bombay who looks like a milkman; he crosses the Kauvery river to explore the wild jungle country of the infamous outlaw Veerappan of the handlebar moustache and traces his story; and he meets a Bollywood villain and that too a particularly villainous-looking one - Gulshan Grover. No wonder he looks askance at everyone and imagines trouble everywhere. In the last part of the book he travels to Kashi/Benaras as well as Calcutta to further explore religious cults, especially the cult of the goddess Kali and also the monastic order of the ascetic Shaivite sadhus, the Aghoris. The cult of Kali in particular because of close association with the enigmatic rituals followed by the thugs that are associated with Kali.
One could argue that the central thesis of exploring the phenomenon of thugee and its eradication lies only in the middle of the book, bookended rather loosely by pursuit of Veerappan and the pursuit of Kali. I disagree because I think he is quite successful in connecting all this in various ways - in terms of a study of the general phenomenon of the outlaw and reasons for why outlaws emerge and thrive as well as a study of how ruling powers treat them, demonise them, and try and vanquish them. Colonial takeovers and wars created large numbers of people who had no means of livelihood anymore and some of those displaced likely went into thuggee. Hence rather than a great vanquisher of thugee colonialism likely created it in the first place and then exacerbated the situation by going on a witch-hunt, using collective punishment and outlawing an entire, vibrant and liberated itinerant culture of living.
With a wry sense of humour and clever turn of phrase Kevin Rushby writes very engagingly and the book is full of humour. Though written in 2002 I don't find it dated; both because its central thesis remains of interest and his observations about the turn of the century India are insightful and thought-provoking, a turn, as the passage of time shows, towards right wing and intolerant politics. Also his questions about what it means to be an outlaw and what creates outlaws and the difference between perception and reality remain poignant even today. His descriptive abilities are tremendous and there are beautifully written and evocative passages about the various locales, especially the jungles of Karnataka, the confluence of rivers in Prayagraj/Allahabad, the Kalighat Kali temple in Kolkata/Calcutta and the ghats of Kashi with their burning pyres, meditating sadhus and surreal mornings. A truly enjoyable and quite an insightful book.
Kevin Rushby's sets out for India, enchanted by Orinetalist notions of thugee. But then his field visits, interviews and close examination of documents from the time thuggee is said to have plagued parts of India, causes him to arrive at a much more dispassionate notion of things. At times, he still seems rater star-struck by colonial officers like William Henry Sleeman who is credited with eradicating thugee on a mass scale through his ruthless and methodical efforts. Thugee was described by him and his colonial contemporaries as a phenomenon to which were attributed from a million to two million deaths. Not just that, it was the macabre and utterly ruthless fashion of execution employed by individuals as well as bands of ordinary looking men using a combination of deception, ingratiation, drugs and silk handkerchiefs combined with their peculiar superstitions, secret language, clandestine practices and religious devotions that makes it all so gruesome and irresistibly fascinating for people of that time. It still hasn't quite lost its enigmatic appeal.
But after all his explorations and meditations Rushby concedes that ultimately eradication of thuggee was a witch-hunt which while it led to ostensible murderers being sent to the gallows, though often on sketchy evidence and following minimal process, many outrightly innocents men too were hanged. The movement for eradication led also to promulgation of draconian laws like the Criminal Tribes Act of 1871 which categorised entire tribes as criminal and deemed criminality as hereditary. All this mumbo jumbo was based on the pseudo-Darwinism of the time where fake scientific theories associated the size and shape of the cranium and other facial and psychical features to criminality. At the bottom of it all was also the colonial distrust of natives - the enemy within - especially wandering and itinerant people, and a desire to control and subjugate (and tax) them. By the time the book ends we have a fairly demystified notion of thuggee and much greater appreciation of the manipulative and exploitative colonial project.
The book is part popular history, part travel literature and on the whole it works quite well. At times Rushby is too gripped by the tendency to 'other' the natives he meets - his gora identity lurks as the benchmark for what is right, and he distrusts the local characters he encounters. But in his defense one of his primary projects here is also to explore the notion of villainy and thugs in modern India, at times finding parallels with old-style thuggee and at times not. Naturally he spends much of the time described in the book in pursuing modern day real and perceived villains - he meets for instance a Don in Bombay who looks like a milkman; he crosses the Kauvery river to explore the wild jungle country of the infamous outlaw Veerappan of the handlebar moustache and traces his story; and he meets a Bollywood villain and that too a particularly villainous-looking one - Gulshan Grover. No wonder he looks askance at everyone and imagines trouble everywhere. In the last part of the book he travels to Kashi/Benaras as well as Calcutta to further explore religious cults, especially the cult of the goddess Kali and also the monastic order of the ascetic Shaivite sadhus, the Aghoris. The cult of Kali in particular because of close association with the enigmatic rituals followed by the thugs that are associated with Kali.
One could argue that the central thesis of exploring the phenomenon of thugee and its eradication lies only in the middle of the book, bookended rather loosely by pursuit of Veerappan and the pursuit of Kali. I disagree because I think he is quite successful in connecting all this in various ways - in terms of a study of the general phenomenon of the outlaw and reasons for why outlaws emerge and thrive as well as a study of how ruling powers treat them, demonise them, and try and vanquish them. Colonial takeovers and wars created large numbers of people who had no means of livelihood anymore and some of those displaced likely went into thuggee. Hence rather than a great vanquisher of thugee colonialism likely created it in the first place and then exacerbated the situation by going on a witch-hunt, using collective punishment and outlawing an entire, vibrant and liberated itinerant culture of living.
With a wry sense of humour and clever turn of phrase Kevin Rushby writes very engagingly and the book is full of humour. Though written in 2002 I don't find it dated; both because its central thesis remains of interest and his observations about the turn of the century India are insightful and thought-provoking, a turn, as the passage of time shows, towards right wing and intolerant politics. Also his questions about what it means to be an outlaw and what creates outlaws and the difference between perception and reality remain poignant even today. His descriptive abilities are tremendous and there are beautifully written and evocative passages about the various locales, especially the jungles of Karnataka, the confluence of rivers in Prayagraj/Allahabad, the Kalighat Kali temple in Kolkata/Calcutta and the ghats of Kashi with their burning pyres, meditating sadhus and surreal mornings. A truly enjoyable and quite an insightful book.
May 14, 2014
I read this for research to learn more about the Thuggees, and found the book to be much deeper than a mere history lesson. Rushby wrote a book that is part travelogue of modern India and part history lesson, all about how the idea of thugs and Kali were perceived in the 19th century and now. He's British and he's very forthright about the deeds committed during the British colonial period--many details that I, as an American, was ignorant of. He comes to some fascinating conclusions regarding the historical Thug: why the subclass came to exist, why the British handled the phenomena as they did, and the repercussions this had. For nonfiction, it's a very fast read and very educational. The book provided me with more insight than I expected.
May 19, 2020
The story of the Thugee group in India and British imperialism.
June 11, 2025
Like other books by Mr. Rushby I have read there are good things in this book but like all travel/memoirs in dated quickly, only two years later the great bandit Veerappan was dead (see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veerapp.... Much more interesting is his demolition of the whole 'Kali' thugee cult created by a 19th century Englishman whose very dubious account suppressing the thuggee cult in India has been quoted again and again like a sacred text and even inspired the racist nonsense of the 'Indian Jones and the Temple Doom'film. If you want some references to some modern scholarship debunking thuggee following the link:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thuggee....
By the time I read this book it was hopelessly out-of-date but I did enjoy it but I can't imagine abnother eight years hasn't pushed it further into irrelevancy.
By the time I read this book it was hopelessly out-of-date but I did enjoy it but I can't imagine abnother eight years hasn't pushed it further into irrelevancy.
October 12, 2022
A very well written analysis of the Indian thug “cult” and its relevance to and comparison with India of today. Poignant, insightful, witty and having a certain charm this book demonstrates that Kevin Rushby is an excellent travel writer. I can’t wait to read more of his work.
November 14, 2024
Reread recently and thoroughly enjoyed, despite all the loose ends. A reminder, if it were needed, that asking a question in India simply opens more questions and produces few, if any, answers.
April 5, 2022
It's a good read.
As many have pointed out it’s a travel diary. A long one and a very interesting one. Though towards the end, as it happens with many books, Rushby just rushed through. Maybe he had a target number of pages in mind. He just went through the motions since in the beginning he had announced those chapters, chose places. Last quarter of the book felt unnecessarily haphazard.
It’s not really a historical account or investigation. In fact far from it and while it disappointed in the beginning, I don’t really mind it having finished the book. It’s a travelogue with critical thoughts applied to things he has read, hears (a lot of that is just gossip and random blabbering from people and he admits that).
It’s an unplanned, at his own pace whims kind of journey and he wrote about it.
Often he is quick to dismiss beliefs or even accepted narratives which are without evidence, countering with opinion which are - again - without evidence. I personally agreed with most of them but that’s how they’re done. Also, he doesn’t seem to have consulted with anyone regarding spelling of names of people who he came across and just wrote it down the way a Brit in 1700s might have heard it written ot down.
For me one of the most fascinating part of the book remained author’s equation, and later monologues and certain but subtle yearning and some kind of tension, with a fellow Brit he met in Jabalpur and explored the area around together with her. It lingers on the pages until the end without being talked about much. Or maybe I just read too much between the lines.
It’s a good read if you’re not looking for a history book, but a critical travelogue. Besides, I would appreciate the book just for the scenes author evokes by his description of the geographies of the places he visited, passed by, sometimes almost instantly pushing you to go and see those sparse places.
As many have pointed out it’s a travel diary. A long one and a very interesting one. Though towards the end, as it happens with many books, Rushby just rushed through. Maybe he had a target number of pages in mind. He just went through the motions since in the beginning he had announced those chapters, chose places. Last quarter of the book felt unnecessarily haphazard.
It’s not really a historical account or investigation. In fact far from it and while it disappointed in the beginning, I don’t really mind it having finished the book. It’s a travelogue with critical thoughts applied to things he has read, hears (a lot of that is just gossip and random blabbering from people and he admits that).
It’s an unplanned, at his own pace whims kind of journey and he wrote about it.
Often he is quick to dismiss beliefs or even accepted narratives which are without evidence, countering with opinion which are - again - without evidence. I personally agreed with most of them but that’s how they’re done. Also, he doesn’t seem to have consulted with anyone regarding spelling of names of people who he came across and just wrote it down the way a Brit in 1700s might have heard it written ot down.
For me one of the most fascinating part of the book remained author’s equation, and later monologues and certain but subtle yearning and some kind of tension, with a fellow Brit he met in Jabalpur and explored the area around together with her. It lingers on the pages until the end without being talked about much. Or maybe I just read too much between the lines.
It’s a good read if you’re not looking for a history book, but a critical travelogue. Besides, I would appreciate the book just for the scenes author evokes by his description of the geographies of the places he visited, passed by, sometimes almost instantly pushing you to go and see those sparse places.
July 18, 2013
Thank you, Kevin Rushby, for giving me back my appetite for travel-writers. A multitude of serendipitous events propelled me in the direction of “Children of Kali” – a recent taking up of yoga, a re-ignited fascination with all things Indian, and a bizarre mid-winter proliferation of blood-red hibiscus (a symbol of the goddess Kali herself) in my garden. Whatever. I am so grateful it all led me to this fascinating odyssey through the India of the ‘thugees’. Rushby has woven a complex tapestry uniting a myriad of historical and cultural threads that go back to pre- East India Company days emerging in the sub-continent of the present with all its political and social complexities. What a pleasure to read. Rushby is that rare observer who can simply allow himself to be a vehicle, not intruding on his own story but presenting his own experience as a means of provoking thought in his audience. How have I not read him before? No matter. I have all his books on order and intend to make up for lost time now.
May 9, 2014
So what I really wanted to read was Mike Dash's "Thug" but am having trouble finding a (reasonably priced) copy. I guess it was my mistake to try to substitute. I honestly couldn't make it through the book for several reasons. The first is that it was boring. I repeatedly had to struggle to stay awake on the train while reading it. I think, for me, it's biggest flaw was that the author inserted himself too much into a story that was purportedly about the history of Indian thug culture. I really resented his colonialist superior British attitude towards the Indians he encounters. Blech. I honestly can't figure out what drove him to choose this subject. That said, he does give some information on the history and it's refutations, but sometimes these were presented in a confusing way
I think I will have to pony up for the Mike Dash book
I think I will have to pony up for the Mike Dash book
July 19, 2010
Kevin Rushby, an English writer, sets off for India with the intention of searching for both a modern day bandit and traces of the thugee cult of the 19th century. In the most graceful of turns, his attention shifts to the paranoia of the British Raj and the causes of the seemingly ubiquitous corruption in contemporary India. Frankly, I'd go anywhere Mr. Rushby wants to take me.
July 2, 2015
This book was written about thuggee and was my main reason to read more about this menace of that time. It has not much about thuggee. But kevin s book is worth reading having a good description of modern india s confused religeous psyche and business of religion as it is with all other ppls of religion. Good book.
September 24, 2015
The subject was mildly interesting his writing style was capable and I'll certainly go onto to read other books by him.
July 7, 2015
Fascinating look at a cult that may-or may not, if you look at recent theories-in old India.
December 11, 2015
it was a real good book until about half way through the book ,it turned into a travel log. couldn't finish it.
September 28, 2007
What I wanted was a study of thuggee. What I got was a good travelogue.
May 21, 2010
The original thugs murder and disfigure in the service of religious and/or civic perversion.
Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews