Editing Thuggee (section)

=== Modern scepticism ===
Modern contemporary scholars have become increasingly sceptical of the "thuggee" concept, and have even questioned the existence of such a phenomenon.<ref name="Cambridge Scholars Publishing">{{cite book|title=Tabish Khair: Critical Perspectives|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=DnExBwAAQBAJ|first1=Cristina M.|last1=Gámez-Fernández|first2= Om P.|last2= Dwivedi|publisher=Cambridge Scholars Publishing|year=2014|isbn=9781443857888}}</ref><ref name="ReferenceA">{{Cite journal | doi=10.1080/13642520802193262|title = Thuggee: An orientalist construction?| journal=Rethinking History| volume=12| issue=3| pages=383–397|year = 2008|last1 = MacFie|first1 = Alexander Lyon|s2cid = 144212481}}</ref><ref name="S. Shankar 2001"/> The British representation of Thuggee is held by some critics to be full of inconsistencies and exaggerations. Numerous historians have described "thuggee" as basically the invention of the British colonial regime.<ref>{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Y2OADAAAQBAJ|title=Engaging Colonial Knowledge: Reading European Archives in World History|publisher=Springer|year=2011|author1=R. Roque|author2= K. Wagner|isbn=978-0230360075}}</ref> However, the more radical critics in this camp have themselves been criticized for focusing overly on British perceptions of thuggee rather than on the historical accuracy of primary source documents, but conclude that "the colonial representation of thuggee cannot be taken at face value".{{sfn|Wagner|2007|p=7}}

Martine van Woerkens of [[École Pratique des Hautes Études]] writes that evidence for a Thuggee group in the 19th century was the product of "colonial imaginings", arising from British fear of the little-known interior of India, as well as limited understanding of the religious and social practices of its inhabitants.<ref name="woerkens">van Woerkens, Martine (2002). ''The Strangled Traveler: Colonial Imaginings and the Thugs of India''.</ref>

[[Cynthia Ann Humes]] states that the testimony of most of the thugs captured by Sleeman does not support his view of priests profiting from and directing the thugs. She adds that the Islamic idea of fate was more commonly invoked during Thuggee acts, while invoking the Hindu [[Bhavani]] was far more rare.<ref name="University of California Press" />

Historian Kim Wagner views the policies of [[East India Company]] in relation to the dismissal of armies of the conquered Indian kingdoms as being responsible for the development of Thuggee. Roaming bands of freelance soldiers had often joined one kingdom or another during the pre-British era, with the main income of many armies coming from plunder. After being dismissed from military service, they turned to robbery as a means of subsistence.{{sfn|Wagner|2007|p=92}} He also contested whether the thugs mentioned by [[Firuz Shah Tughlaq]]'s biography were actually the same thugs the British authorities fought against.{{sfn|Wagner|2007|p=156}}

Sagnik Bhattacharya agrees with the sceptics and claims the thug-phenomenon to be nothing but a manifestation of the fear of the unknown that dawned on the British Raj at the thought of being alone in the wilderness of Central India. Using literary and legal sources, he has connected the "information panic" of the thug-phenomenon to the limitations of British demographic models that fell short of truly capturing the ethnic diversity of India. He explains the "Thuggee hysteria" around 1830s as being caused by the Raj's angst at realizing its own ignorance of local society.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Bhattacharya|first=Sagnik|date=4 May 2020|title=Monsters in the dark: the discovery of Thuggee and demographic knowledge in colonial India|journal=Palgrave Communications|language=en|volume=6|issue=1|pages=1–9|doi=10.1057/s41599-020-0458-8|issn=2055-1045|doi-access=free}}</ref>