Set in the tumultuous years of the late 1820s and 1830s, Siddhartha Sarma’s latest novel Twilight in a Knotted World takes us back to that...
Set in the tumultuous years of the late 1820s and 1830s, Siddhartha Sarma’s latest novel Twilight in a Knotted World takes us back to that moment in South Asian history when British interests were beginning to push for imperial control over the subcontinent. As the process of expansion and imperial governmentality are methodically initiated, mysterious confederacies of criminals who looted and strangled their victims along Indian travel routes begin to draw the attention of higher Company officials.
In an article published in the Anglo-Indian press in 1816, Captain Richard Sherwood argues that “Thuggee” was an ancient religious practice in which Hindus and Muslims alike expressed their devotion to Goddess Bhawanee through the ritual strangulation of travellers. In 1829, two other Company officers, TC Smith and William Sleeman, were given official permission by the India Office to run a campaign to systematically suppress and prosecute the Thugs.
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Twilight in a Knotted World is the story of this historic operation with Captain WH Sleeman as its conscientious but reluctant hero. Governor-General Bentinck tells Captain Sleeman, “…we need a better class of administrators…In fact, we need a better administration…need to understand the people as much as crimes and criminal groups…I am, I fear, passing on a political Gordian’s Knot...
