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This volume is produced from digital images created through the University of Michigan University Library's large-scale digitization efforts. The Library seeks to preserve the intellectual content of items in a manner that facilitates and promotes a variety of uses. The digital reformatting process results in an electronic version of the original text that can be both accessed online and used to create new print copies. The Library also understands and values the usefulness of print and makes reprints available to the public whenever possible. This book and hundreds of thousands of others can be found in the HathiTrust, an archive of the digitized collections of many great research libraries. For access to the University of Michigan Library's digital collections, please see http://www.lib.umich.edu and for information about the HathiTrust, please visit http://www.hathitrust.org ... Read more

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They murdered more than a million travellers without spilling a drop of blood. They were inspired by religious fanaticism, yet came from many faiths. Their weapon was the handkerchief, their sacrament sugar, and their goddess Kali. They were the thugs. He is responsible for more than a hundred murders. He lives in the deepest jungles left in India and avoids capture, his followers claim, by magical powers. Some say he is a freedom fighter, others that he is a vicious hoodlum. He is Veerappan, India's most wanted man, and the most famous member of the modern thug cult. This book investigates this dark side of India. The author's quest takes him to prisons and gangster hideouts, probing the nature of crime and punishment in a country where the distinction between good and evil can be as murky as the Ganges. Part travelogue, part history and part personal record, this book is a revelation too - the Devil of the title is not Kali, nor is it any of the thugs or other villains, but the demons that exist within a traveller's own mind. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

What's left of the Thugs?
In this intricate, meandering and totally entertaining travelogue, the English journalist Kevin Rushby gives us a taste of criminality in modern India. Correctly starting from as far back as the English Raj's recognition and fight against the Thugs, he draws on memories of childhood readings, historical research, legends, modern fiction and present day interviews with criminals and policemen to paint a wide scenery of what criminality has matured to in the deeply ethical India.
The book starts as a literary historical research into the Thug cult (ritual killers that strangled strangers with a silken scarf in honour of the goddess Kali), that became so fascinating for all the lovers of adventures from the 1830's to 1952 (when John Master's "The Deceivers" was written). For those out there that identify in this kind of literature remember "Gunga Din" (1937), Eugene Sue's Feringhea in the "Wandering Jew", "The Confession of a Thug" by Meadow's Taylor (famous literary success of 1839, still in press). To find information in India, our Author starts from Bollywood interviewing actors and writers of gangster movies and moves on to the search for Veerappan, India's most famous bandit, turned separatist on the Tamil Nadu-Karnata border. Here he doesn't manage to meet the outlaw but speaks with people that have been kidnapped and gains many hints on the evolution of banditry into political interest in the Tamil separatist movement.Our hero then travels north in what once was the most Thug infested area (Madhya Pradesh). Here he visits the vestiges of Sleeman's (the great eliminator of the Thug cult) memory that have been amazingly well preserved. He visits Hyderabad, Nagpur, crosses the Namada Rivers, always describing the beautiful peaceful life of rural India and the monuments of the past. Among the many encounters he meets a fascinating girl he calls Mandy, that seems to act like a puzzling inspiration for our traveller to open his mind to new and different outlooks on the country and its culture. At onepoint he reaches almost the conclusion that the definition of a Thug cult might have been one of the many examples of Orientalism (E. Said, the preconceived idea of attributing defects to the East) tainted by a preconception of inherited criminality (Lombroso docet). The quest continues to Sagar (where most of the Thugs were executed), then to the Chambal Ravines and Jalaun until a fried sets up an interview with a gangster turned into a social worker, that really embodies the connection between politics and criminality. From the world of Sleeman Rushby passes to that of Kali, their goddess, visiting the Sangam, the holy confluence of the Ganges, Jamuna and Sarawasti rivers. Here he sees the temple of Brindachul with its man-monkeys and reflects of the sense of the goddess who actually represents among other human necessities that of a superior justice, a power over right and wrong, the mystical yearnings and violence of the dispossessed. Varanasi is the next step, where Rushby spends his time looking at sadhus and ghats and gives us insight into India's ancient Brahmin culture. Swimming the Ganga at dawn leaves its sign and then our hero goes to Kolkata (Kali's city) were he will meet a gang of Bengali drug dealers protected by a holy man they forage with hemp. The temple experience with the goad sacrifices is very strong and Kevin finally seems to identify with the bloodshed ritual and find an end to his search o criminality and evil. Atonement after sacrifice is just around the corner.
The description of the criminal phenomena in a foreign country is not easy, indeed it is a feat. However the intermingling of good and bad, past and present, sacred and profane, is typical of old countries. No marvel then, Mafia in Italy is just the same and we live in 2007, so Rushby's conscience of flow writing and apparently far fetched quest serve as a frame for describing modern day India's reality.
A very nice book for curious, literate readers.

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By a Bengali woman and scholar, study of texts and the role of Kali within Indian culture. excellent pre-reviews. Astrong feminist statement,careful scholarship. Discussion of Rig Veda, Tagore's Chandalika, Karnad's Hayavandana, Chugtai's Crooked lIne, Devi, It Does Not Die, Eliade, Bengal Nights, Tagore, Gora,Roy, Good of Small Things. ... Read more

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A Fascinating Scholarly Work / Kali in Literature
This book is a fascinating work of scholarship which traces the path of the Goddess Kali through several literary works. Although thorough and well-researched, it is not your typical volume of scholarly literary analysis. Throughout the book, the author has illuminated the pages with her own personal insights and impressions, so that the reader may share in the sense of delight and wonder of making new spiritual and intellectual connections. This book is for those interested in religion, literature, or both. I highly recommend this book to the serious reader who wants to explore this literary-spiritual connection. It is a valuable contribution to the field. ... Read more

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This book is part of the Our Name in History series, a collection of fascinating facts and statistics, alongside short historical commentary, created to tell the story of previous generations who have shared this name.The information in this book is a compendium of research and data pulled from census records, military records, ships' logs, immigrant and port records, as well as other reputable sources. Topics include:

• Name Meaning and Origin
• Immigration Patterns and Census Detail
• Family Lifestyles
• Military Service History
• Comprehensive Source Guide, for future research

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Mantras and basic text, original Sanskrit, romanized transliteration and a complete English translation. also background on Kali, Hindu belief. ... Read more

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This work presents the findings of a study of the effects of overcrowding in households in Jakarta. ... Read more

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This Book Is In German. ... Read more

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One of the most important issues that the Indian women's movement has taken up has been that of violence against women. From the very early campaigns around rape and dowry deaths, to the continuing struggle against all forms of domestic violence and, increasingly, political rape, the issue of violence has remained in the forefront, both for the movement and for Indian women in general. By making an assessment of the theories which attempt to explain the origins of violence, this booklet prepares the ground for a deeper understanding of a phenomenon which has systematically kept women in fear and subordination for centuries. In addition to a discussion of the radical feminist and traditional Marxist analyses of violence, the author puts forward three recent theories which see a nexus between economic exploitation and patriarchy; caste, patriarchy and violence; and ecological crises, maldevelopment and violence. ... Read more

Product Description
This book is part of the Our Name in History series, a collection of fascinating facts and statistics, alongside short historical commentary, created to tell the story of previous generations who have shared this name.The information in this book is a compendium of research and data pulled from census records, military records, ships' logs, immigrant and port records, as well as other reputable sources. Topics include:

• Name Meaning and Origin
• Immigration Patterns and Census Detail
• Family Lifestyles
• Military Service History
• Comprehensive Source Guide, for future research