techriot on Nostr: Thug – Or A Million Murders In the all-consuming culture wars of our era, it is ...
Thug – Or A Million Murders
In the all-consuming culture wars of our era, it is often tempting to look for convenient rhetorical victories. Sometimes, however, these victories can be too convenient. I remember such victories from the 1990s when I first learned of the Thuggees of India.
All I knew at the time was that they were a murderous cult, prevalent during the 19th-century British Raj, and that the British (to their credit) had completely stamped them out. This was often brought up by conservatives when defending British colonialism from the charge of racism. If the British were so racist, why did they—and not the Indians themselves—eradicate the Thuggees? It was the Indians who suffered from them, not the British.
In the all-consuming culture wars of our era, it is often tempting to look for convenient rhetorical victories. Sometimes, however, these victories can be too convenient. I remember such victories from the 1990s when I first learned of the Thuggees of India.
All I knew at the time was that they were a murderous cult, prevalent during the 19th-century British Raj, and that the British (to their credit) had completely stamped them out. This was often brought up by conservatives when defending British colonialism from the charge of racism. If the British were so racist, why did they—and not the Indians themselves—eradicate the Thuggees? It was the Indians who suffered from them, not the British.