Book Review
Children of Kali: A Critique of Contemporary India
By Kulamarva Balakrishna
CHILDREN OF KALI: Through India in Search of Bandits, the Thug Cult, and the British Raj. By Kevin Rushby. Penguin Books.
A British author, while searching for law and order in India 55 years after the Raj retired, finds Indians cruel, cunning and criminal, and living in "operational anarchy"!
It all begins with an invitation to the author, Kevin Rushby, at the turn of this century, to give a talk to a batch of 70 condemned men in Wakefield High Security Prison. To prepare for the event, Mr. Rushby goes to a bookshop selling secondhand books. It is the bookseller there who introduces him to the campaign the British had launched in India in the nineteenth century for the eradication of thuggery. The campaign finally led to the establishment of law and order in the country. According to one estimate, the thugs may have murdered more than a million unsuspecting men, women and children.
The thugs were Indian cheats, who operated under the cover of religion. They were Hindus, Muslims and others belonging to all kinds of beliefs. But all of them regarded the killing they did as a sacrifice to Mother Goddess Kali. They caught unsuspecting pilgrims and strangled them with a handkerchief that hid a coin in its fold. They were motivated by money. And their act was robbery and murder, pure and simple.
Thuggery, as their crime came to be called, was eradicated in the 1830’s by a young British officer, Major General William Sleeman. It was his grandson James who, about a century later, did some rough calculating and arrived at a figure of one million as the number of victims of the thugs or phansidars.
Influenced by India-specialist reporter Mark Tully and overwhelmed by novelist Salman Rushdy, Kevin Rushby flies to Bombay as an investigative traveler. The result of his travel around India is this exceedingly readable and thought-provoking book.
As Mark Tully started his chase of the Indian monsoon from Sri Lanka, Mr. Rushby begins his search of law and order in India from the south, at the Tamil Nadu-Karnataka border. His mission takes him to the Hogenakkal waterfalls on the Kaveri River and the thick, cavernous forests that shelter the brigand-turned-kidnapper, Veerappan. It ends in Dakshineshwar, Calcutta, where he comes across a band of drug-dealing boys working with the blessings of a baba (holy man). They operate underground on the India-Bangladesh border.
While on his mission, Rushby also traces the remains of and monuments for Major General Sleeman, in Madhya Pradesh. Reading between the lines, one gets the impression that the deft marshaling of facts the author has done in this book is for the purpose of conveying a message: that Indians may be unworthy of their freedom and unfit to govern themselves.
Children of Kali brings back to mind the year 1965 when I wrote my first book, A Portrait of Bombay's Underworld. It also reminds me of the time when I wrote How Fascism Came to India, a booklet analyzing the events that led to the declaration of emergency and suspension of all civil liberties, in 1975, by the late Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. In that booklet, I had predicted fairly accurately what happened in India thereafter. The booklet was serialized in The Voice of India, a monthly published from New York in 1975-77, which actively campaigned against Mrs. Gandhi’s infamous emergency rule.
Last September, I was witness to a curious spectacle: Police Commissioner R.S. Sharma of Bombay, who had only a few more months left to retire, was sitting at his fortified Crawford Market headquarters. The picture he presented was that of a hardened criminal. Visitors to him were thoroughly frisked and made to go through metal detectors. In my fifty-plus years in journalism, I had not seen or heard about a leader of a police force protected in that manner.
A lead story appeared in The Times of India, saying that the Bombay police commissioner's post was to be given to the highest bidder. There was no challenge to the story from official quarters. Soon after the story appeared, Commissioner Sharma was suspended from his job and then discharged. He is now being tried as an accomplice in a crime involving theft and falsification of government security papers, apparently stolen or printed on decommissioned printing machines of the Government of India Security Press. The special team investigating that crime has since uncovered another racket. It involves bribes ranging from Rs.100,000 (about $2,200) to Rs.100 million (about $2,200,000) given to bring about transfer of police officers. The story has been making headlines all over India.
Bizarre Real-Life Dramas Unfold
As I read Children of Kali, many other sad and bizarre real-life dramas also unfold in front of my mind's eye: a Delhi politician awaiting execution by court for killing his wife and roasting her body in the tandoor oven of his own restaurant; an inspector general of police charged with murdering a female journalist; a commissioner of police and some 15 senior police officers accused of providing logistics to the enemy engaged in a low-intensity battle against their own country; and many more.
Law and order in India, or the lack thereof, has become a matter of concern to many, not just to the author of this book. Like wild elephants running amuck in nearby villages when displaced from their natural habitat by human encroachment, monastic leaders of all hues and naked sadhus are running around in their eagerness to grab power. An ordained nun has given up her monastic duties to take up position as Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh. Brahmins are busy performing putrakameshti (a Vedic ritual) for families anxious to have male children, that too in a society in which males vastly outnumber females. The holy land of India is witnessing an unprecedented demand for mrityunjaya fire worship by those seeking immortality.
There is a rush for mass worship in temples. My bankers tell me that many temples are engaged in selling in the black market the large amounts of coins they collect from devotees. Those coins reach Dubai through illicit channels. In Dubai, they are smelted into metal. The metal ends up in Islamabad for use by ISI (Inter Services Intelligence) agents. I see the relevance of Children of Kali to contemporary India.
The book reconstructs and covers a period of 200 years after the defeat of Tippu Sultan by the British and Sleeman's campaign for the eradication of thugs and thuggery from the Indian subcontinent.
(Kulamarva Balakrishna is a journalist and social activist.)
[Published on January 23, 2004.]
[Readers are invited to comment. Send your comments to letters@eastwestinquirer.com]
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Readers' Response
An Engaging Review
I found the review of the book engaging because it gave sufficient background info and specifics about the content.
Kathryn Gleason, New York, New York, U.S.A.
February 1, 2004
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Thuggery Still Thrives in India
The reference to novelist Salman Rushdie and brigand Veerappan in Balakrishna's book review confirms that thuggery is still thriving in India. Earlier this month, Rushdie and his girlfriend Padma Lakshmi had to beat a hasty retreat from Mumbai (Bombay) after he received death threats from Muslim fundamentalists. The fact that Veerappan has not been captured or killed to this day, is evidence of the ennui that has overcome police personnel of the Special Task Force set up by the Karnataka and Tamil Nadu Governments for this purpose. In a sense, this is "political thuggery" of the people's hopes and aspirations.
Colin de Souza, Bangalore, India
January 23, 2004