This book constitutes the first in-depth examination of thuggee as a type of banditry which emerged in a specific socio-economic and geographic context. Thuggee did not constitute a caste-like identity, and was a means of obtaining a livelihood reverted to by all strata of Indian society in certain areas. As such it constituted a highly institutionalized social practice related to issues of patronage and retainership, identity and legitimacy, and was defined by the appropriation of high status rituals and martial ethos. The history of ‘thugs’ need no longer be limited to the study of their representations, and this book reconstructs and historicizes thuggee as a social phenomenon—as less than the sacrificial cult constructed by the British, yet more than the colonial phantasmagoria counter-posited by post-colonial scholars.