ABSTRACT
The Thugs, like the Assassins, attracted such fearsome notoriety that their name lives on centuries later as a noun in English and other languages. The Thugs were a Hindu caste who killed, mainly by strangulation, an estimated one million people (mainly fellow Hindus) until they were eliminated by the British colonial rulers of India in the nineteenth century (Sleeman 1930). Hinduism is noted as a religion of tolerance and systematic religiously inspired attacks on people of other faiths historically have been rare. Recent years have seen a rise in Hindu fundamentalism, however, and increased attacks on Moslems in India, encouraged by radical political parties such as Shiv Sena.
