The Deceivers is a 1952 novel by John Masters on the Thuggee movement in India during the period of British rule during the 19th-century. It was his second novel, following Nightrunners of Bengal . [1]
The Deceivers is a 1952 novel by John Masters on the Thuggee movement in India during the period of British rule during the 19th-century. It was his second novel, following Nightrunners of Bengal . [1]
The story shows how British officer and colonial administrator William Savage learns of the thuggee cult, infiltrates their society, learns their ways and code of communication, and destroys them by capturing or killing their key leaders. During his travels with the thuggee, he almost falls prey to the cult's ways as he comes to experience the ecstasy of ritual killings. The story shows how complex the web was in terms of type and stature of people involved with the thuggee cult.
The Deceivers portrays the thuggee cult and corruption during Company rule in India. Historically, the East India Company was the world's first joint-stock company — chartered by Queen Elizabeth I of England in 1601.
The main character, William Savage, is an official of the East India Company and tax collector (or, as he would rather view himself, colonial administrator) of the fictional district of "Madhia". He is deeply committed to his duties, which he considers to lie with the people of his district, rather than tax extraction for the East India Company. He is fluent in four dialects and has a highly developed sense of honour. At the beginning of the story, he marries his fiancée Mary Wilson, the daughter of Colonel Wilson and twenty years his junior. In the course of the story, he discovers a mass grave, filled with the remains of travellers, all of whom were evidently strangled to death in ritualistic fashion, among them a recently killed British officer. This leads him to begin an investigation, in the course of which he arrests Hussein, who confesses to being a thug, or deceiver. Colonel Wilson arrives and is furious at the measures that Savage has taken to find those responsible for the mass murders. He refuses to believe Savage's story of the thuggee cult, blaming the murders on dacoits (bandits) instead. Savage then decides to become a thug and infiltrates their society with Hussein's help. His character is loosely based on William Sleeman, who historically started an extensive campaign involving profiling, intelligence, and executions.
William is the father of Rodney Savage, the protagonist in Nightrunners of Bengal , set during the Indian Rebellion of 1857.
"It offers color and violence in large gobs" said the Washington Post. [2] The New York Times called it "an unfocused work that never comes to grips with its material." [3]
The novel was adapted for radio by the BBC in 1984. [4]
Film rights were bought by John Davis of The Rank Organisation in the late 1950s. [5] It was adapted in 1988 as the Merchant Ivory Productions film starring Shashi Kapoor, Pierce Brosnan, Bijaya Jena, Saeed Jaffrey, Rajesh Vivek, and Dalip Tahil.
Dacoity is a term used for "banditry" in the Indian subcontinent. The spelling is the anglicised version of the Hindi word डाकू (daaku); "dacoit" is a colloquial Indian English word with this meaning and it appears in the Glossary of Colloquial Anglo-Indian Words and Phrases (1903). Banditry is criminal activity involving robbery by groups of armed bandits. The East India Company established the Thuggee and Dacoity Department in 1830, and the Thuggee and Dacoity Suppression Acts, 1836–1848 were enacted in British India under East India Company rule. Areas with ravines or forests, such as Chambal and Chilapata Forests, were once known for dacoits.
Thuggee are actions and crimes carried out by Thugs, historically, organised gangs of professional robbers and murderers in India. The English word thug traces its roots to the Hindi ठग, which means 'swindler' or 'deceiver'. Related words are the verb thugna, from the Sanskrit स्थग and स्थगति. This term, describing the murder and robbery of travellers, was popular in the northern parts of the Indian subcontinent, especially northern and eastern regions of historical India.
Major-general Sir William Henry Sleeman KCB was a British soldier and administrator in British India. He is best known for his work from the 1830s in suppressing the organized criminal gangs known as Thuggee. He also discovered the holotype specimen of the sauropod dinosaur Titanosaurus indicus in Jabalpur in 1828.
Colonel Philip Meadows Taylor,, an administrator in British India and a novelist, made notable contributions to public knowledge of South India. Though largely self-taught, he was a polymath, working alternately as a judge, engineer, artist, and man of letters.
Lieutenant Colonel John Masters, DSO, OBE was a British novelist and regular officer of the Indian Army.
Thug Behram, also known as Buhram Jamedar and the King of the Thugs, was a leader of the Thuggee cult active in Awadh in central India during the late 18th and early 19th century, and is often cited as one of the world's most prolific serial killers. He may have been involved in up to 931 murders by strangulation between 1790 and 1840 performed with a ceremonial rumāl, a handkerchief-like cloth used by his cult as a garrote. Only 125 were confirmed.
Bhowani Junction is a 1954 novel by British novelist John Masters, which was the basis of a 1956 film starring Ava Gardner and Stewart Granger. It is set amidst the turbulence of the British withdrawal from India. It is notable for its portrayal of the Eurasian (Anglo-Indian) community, who were caught in their loyalties between the departing British and the majority Indian population. The Anglo-Indian characters in the novel, like many members of their community, are closely involved with the Indian railway system.
Jemadar or jamadar is a title used for various military and other officials in the Indian subcontinent.
The Lotus and the Wind is a spy novel by John Masters published in 1953. It continues his saga of the Savage family, who are part of the British Raj in India, and is set against the backdrop of the Great Game, the period of tension between Britain and Russia in Central Asia during the late nineteenth century.
Nightrunners of Bengal is the title of the first novel by John Masters. It is a work of historical fiction set against the background of the Indian Rebellion of 1857. It was published in 1951 in the United Kingdom by Michael Joseph, London, and in the United States by the Viking Press, New York.
Organised crime in India refers to organised crime elements originating in India and active in many parts of the world. The purpose of organised crime in India, as elsewhere in the world, is monetary gain. Its virulent form in modern times is due to several socio-economic and political factors and advances in science and technology. There is no firm data to indicate the number of organised criminal gangs operating in the country, their membership, their modus operandi, and the areas of their operations. Their structure and leadership patterns may not strictly fall in line with the classical Italian mafia.
Gunga Din is a 1939 American adventure film from RKO Radio Pictures directed by George Stevens and starring Cary Grant, Victor McLaglen, and Douglas Fairbanks Jr., loosely based on the 1890 poem of the same name by Rudyard Kipling combined with elements of his 1888 short story collection Soldiers Three. The film is about three British sergeants and Gunga Din, their native bhisti, who fight the Thuggee, an Indian murder cult, in colonial British India.
The British Empire has often been portrayed in fiction. Originally such works described the Empire because it was a contemporary part of life; nowadays fictional references are also frequently made in a steampunk context.
Confessions of a Thug is an English novel written by Philip Meadows Taylor in 1839 based on the Thuggee cult in India. It was a best-seller in 19th-century Britain, becoming the British Empire's most sensational ethnographic fiction in the first half of the 19th century; its avid readers included Queen Victoria. It was one of the best-selling crime novels of the 19th century, and was the most influential novel about India prior to Rudyard Kipling's Kim (1901). The novel's popularity established the word "thug" in the English language.
Sleemanabad is a village in Madhya Pradesh, India, approximately 62 km from Jabalpur and 32 km from Katni.
The Deceivers is a 1988 adventure film directed by Nicholas Meyer, starring Pierce Brosnan, Shashi Kapoor and Saeed Jaffrey. The film is based on the 1952 John Masters novel of the same name regarding the murderous Thuggee of India.
The Stranglers of Bombay is a 1959 British adventure horror film directed by Terence Fisher for Hammer Films dealing with the British East India Company's investigation of the cult of Thuggee stranglers in the 1830s. The film stars Guy Rolfe, Allan Cuthbertson and Andrew Cruickshank.
The Thuggee and Dacoity Suppression Acts, 1836–48 in British India under East India Company rule were a series of legal acts that outlawed thugee—a practice in North and Central India involving robbery and ritualized murder and mutilation on highways—and dacoity, a form of banditry prevalent in the same region, and prescribed punishment for the same.
This article details events occurring in the year 1839 in India. Major events include the reduction of the Khanate of Kalat to a subsidiary ally of the British, and the capture of Aden in Yemen by the East India Company, creating an important stopover for voyages between Europe and India.
Kim Ati Wagner is a Danish-British historian of colonial India and the British Empire at Queen Mary University of London. He has written a number of books on India, starting with Thuggee: Banditry and the British in early nineteenth-century India in 2007. He followed that up with a source book on Thuggee and has also written on the uprising of 1857 and the Amritsar massacre. A British citizen, Wagner feels an affinity for India.