Abstract
Every archive holds many stories; this paper analyses the treatment and socio-political role of the Indian goddess icon, Kali, in the early nineteenth century, considering the story of legal subjectivity through her changing depiction and worship. Kali was reimagined as a monster-like figure of hate and fear, of depravity and unchecked female sexuality, and the anti-thesis of morality, by the East India Company officers who compiled the archive on thuggee. As the icon of reverence to thuggee, an early codified crime of habitual stranglers, this paper follows Kali through her restructuring under the British imperial vision, and as a mirror-metaphor of repressed feminine energy in the legal archive. I analyse the change in Kali’s iconography under the gaze of the law and the advent of a new colonial branding made up from parts of her legend. It is through this new role that the introduction of a standardised legal framework forced Kali to become secondary to Western paternalism, a role that split her Eastern feminine aspect into separate facets. I discuss how the repression of the female voice in the thuggee archive reflects historic attitudes of engendering that echoed as a form of nomos in the twentieth century socio-political climate of Britain. Finally, I present where the feminine energy highlights the need for a subtle reorientation of the criminal law to overcome areas of recurring dissonance in service to its female subjects.
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Notes
Original quote from John Campbell Oman’s The Brahmans, Theists and Muslims of India: Studies of goddess-worship in Bengal (1909), Chapter 2.
The archive on ‘thuggee’, including statements, publications by officers, and official and personal records, was recorded by East India Company officers under the leadership of Captain (later Major) William Sleeman and is currently at the British Library. It does not contain native Indian-recorded statements.
British India was under proxy rule by the East India Company until 1858 when it was transferred to the Crown. The Thuggee Act 1836 was the basis for the first colonial governance department there, the Thagi and Dakaity (thuggee and dacoity) Department.
Davey is a misspelling of Devi (translated as goddess), a reference to Kali.
See also Caleb Wright’s India and its Inhabitants, 1855, Rev. William Ward’s History, Literature and Mythology of the Hindoos, 1817, and Rev. Alexander Duff’s India, and India Missions,1839, for a missionary’s perspective on caste.
Bhowanee (sic, Bhavani or ‘giver of life’) is another name for Kali. See note 7.
Durga (loosely translated as ‘protectress’) or Shakti (‘manifestation of feminine power’) are alternative names for Kali in her destructive form when she is called upon to protect her followers and/or overcome evil.
Dated February 7th, 1790, in The Letters of Sir William Jones, edited by Garland Cannon 1970, see volume 2.
See Ruth Ellis (deceased) v R, [2003] EWCA Crim 3556.
Victoria and Albert Museum object record, “The Tongue” (1970). https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O187345/the-tongue-artwork-pasche-john/ accessed 1 May 2021.
Cover of the Spring 1972 Preview issue.
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Acknowledgements
Originally presented at the Critical Legal Conference 2021, University of Dundee. My immense gratitude to Piyel Haldar, Eddie Bruce-Jones, Jennifer Neller and David Thomas.
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Keni, A. Manhandling the Goddess: The Thuggee Archive as a Sum of (Male) Parts. Law Critique (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10978-023-09345-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10978-023-09345-6