‘Not regular thieves’: shades of Bhil engagement with company criminal justice (c. 1818–1825)

Abstract

Considerable scholarship exists about the British colonial ideas of the murderous highway-robbing cult of ‘thuggee’, and the legislation passed in 1871 to curb the activities of ‘criminal tribes’ in colonial India. However, limiting research to these two themes of thuggee and criminal tribes alone occludes the informed, savvy and diverse ways that Indigenous communities like Bhils engaged with British justice prior to this time, under the East India Company. Using the under-researched unpublished archives of the Company’s Bombay Judicial Consultations between 1818 and 1825 as a sample, this article provides a survey of the dynamic, engaged and sometimes calculated ways that Bhils interacted with the Company’s system of justice. It contends that when it came to law, crime and culture, there were not black or white responses, but rather ‘shades’ of Bhil’s engagement with Company justice. This engagement was not simply a reactive measure for Bhils to adapt to Company rule. Bhils drew on longer lineages of political and legal practices which predated the Company in how they engaged with the British.