(1) As such, the campaigns against thuggee and suttee frequently cropped up in imperial apologetics.(2) Leaders of the dreaded thuggee cult were trapped and held captive in tunnels by Major General Sir W.H. Sleeman.(3) Wagner argues that the history of thuggee need no longer be limited to the study of its representation.(4) This paper will examine the phenomenon designated thuggee by colonial authority in nineteenth-century India.(5) A number of indigenous sources testify to the existence of thuggee as a criminal practice in the seventeenth century if not earlier, and the emergence of thuggee cannot be ascribed the expansion of the British Raj only.
