Children of Kali: Through India in Search of Bandits, the Thug Cult, and the British Raj - Hardcover

Rushby, Kevin

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0802714188 ISBN 13: 9780802714183

Publisher: Walker Books, 2003

Synopsis

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.

About this title

About the Author

Kevin Rushby has lived and worked in Sudan, Malaysia, Thailand, and Yemen. He is the author of Eating the Flowers of Paradise: A Journey through the Drug Fields of Ethiopia and Yemen, Chasing the Mountain of Light: Across India on the Trail of the Koh-I-Noor Diamond, and Hunting Pirate Heaven: In Search of the Lost Pirate Utopias of the Indian Ocean. He lives in York, England.

From Publishers Weekly

Over the course of centuries, the Indian thug cult (thug is a Hindi word meaning "deceiver") murdered an estimated one million travelers before it was eradicated by the British Raj. Today, notorious, murderous bandit Veerappan similarly plagues the established order. English writer Rushby (Hunting Pirate Heaven, etc.) charmingly narrates his pursuit of both Veerappan (who still eludes security forces, as related in last year's Veerappan [Ecco], by Sunaad Raghuram, and remnants of the thugs, a legendary association whose members strangled in honor of the goddess Kali. Rushby vividly depicts figures like William Henry Sleeman, the British officer who in the 1830s and '40s "hunted down and captured over 3,000 thugs," who were hanged, transported or imprisoned for life. Accounts of Sleeman's exploits titillated British readers, tarred Indians as deceitful savages and helped lead to the punitive Criminal Tribes Act of 1871, based on the idea that criminality was hereditary. Overall, Rushby terms the reaction to the thugs bigoted, "unbalanced and unjust." In addition to history, the author provides a robust travel narrative, with humorous detours (he lodges in a monkey-infested hotel) and unsettling moments (a menacing evening with rural policemen in a violent, corrupt region) and memorable figures, such as a gangster-turned-social worker and a ganja-smoking holy man who confirms Kali's continued covert importance in Indian life as a symbol of positive power rather than violence. A pleasure to read, this is a droll portrait of a lively, fevered contemporary India by a writer attuned to colonialism's ironies. 26 color illus., 1 map not seen by PW.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Walker Books
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0802714188
• ISBN 13: 9780802714183
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 292