A Delightful Vintage Model

The History of the Railway Theives of India

Rai Bahadur M Pauparao Naidu of the Madras Police was a man of no mean achievements. He contributed four studies to the Criminal Tribes of India series, and this, the first in the series, went into a fourth edition in 1915. His earlier works studies the Korawars or Kaikaries; the Buaries, Sansies and Cabulees and professional poisoners and coiners of India.

This volume, complete with illustrations and hints on detection and photographs of thieving tribes squinting darkly into the camera, is an invaluable archival document, with a very illuminating introduction by Vinay Lal highlighting the importance of such a document to the study of colonial discourse.

 

The very idea of classifying some tribes as hereditary thieving lots might seem galling today, but Naidu has taken great pains to show the existence of several such, with detailed anthropological accounts of their culture and customs, their deities, and their mode and extent of operation. This, regardless of the fact that many of these thieves, by Naidus own admission, were adopted into the profession at a very young age, having had no other means or because they were abandoned by their parents.

The railways running through the length and breadth of the country, as can be reasonably expected, gave the pickpockets and robbers a glorious opportunity to expand their activity, the postal system making it possible to remit their thievings to kith and kin in distant parts.

The tribes considered here are the Bhamptas of the Deccan, the Kepmaries and the Takku Waddars of South India, the Bharwars of Gonda and Lallatpur and the Mullahs, Ahirs and Ahiryas of the United Provinces. The last chapter is dedicated to a miscellaneous lot of thieves from Brahmins to those right down the caste hierarchy.

Naidus descriptions are evidently born of first-hand knowledge, for he loses no opportunity to describe how he was able to catch members of thieving tribes red-handed. For him, these tribes are a curious lot, just as much as the Indians were a curious lot for the British. And Naidu, a sincere and loyal servant of the British, was evidently fascinated by the idea of playing detective (indeed, the level of detail he aspires to achieve in each of these accounts would put modern anthropologists to shame). Naidus fascination for the law and the new breakthroughs in criminal detection including the finetuning of fingerprinting techniques is evident in his writing. He was one of the earliest recipients of the Kings Police Medal for distinguished service.

Most of these thieving tribes, he reveals, moved around with the tools of the trade -- a pair of scissors, a small knife (often concealed between the teeth and upper lip), sometimes a chisel and various clothes and trinkets for effecting disguises. They tended to work in groups, with special coded signs for secret communication. Their womenfolk, known to hide trinkets in their private parts, were made to jump so that the stolen goods dropped off their persons, writes Naidu. Others were known to swallow it to defecate it later. The most bizarre instance is that describing tribes which swallowed a lead capsule, which corroded the lining of the throat. The lead was later retrieved and a gold nugget inserted to create a permanent sache for hiding little stolen trinkets!

Rising before us at the end of the volume are shades from an era long gone by. Looming large and clear is Pauparao Naidu himself -- a man with good intentions, not a little pompous, a trifle smug about his professional competence, and trying just that little bit harder to appear erudite. This image is in large measure aided by the photograph of the turbaned man himself, medallions decorating his uniform, a large walrus moustache in place.

Throughout his account, he cannot resist the urge to quote prolifically regardless of the context. Consider these: while describing the Bhamptas of the Deccan he breaks off to say: And live they must, and live they will/ On cursed mammon gotten ill. Or, the Koravar, when caught without a ticket: Drops tears as fast as the Arabian trees/ Their medicinal gum.

Be that as it may, it is dismaying to find that the 27 pages of Vinay Lals introduction carries at least one glaring spelling mistake on each page, while the honourable Naidus 200-odd page volume reproduced here has not one. A telling comment on our own times, eh.