Oh Allah the all-powerful! dispose the whole body of infidels! Scatter their tribe, cause their feet to stagger! Overthrow their councils, change their state, destroy their very root! Cause death to be near them, cut off from them the means of sustenance! Shorten their days! Be their bodies the constant object of their cares, deprive their eyes of sight, make black their faces in shame, destroy in them organs of speech! Slay them as was slain Shedaud who presumed to make a paradise for himself and was slain by command of Allah; drown them as Pharaoh was drowned, and visit them with the severity of the wrath. Oh Avenger! Oh Universal Father! I am downcast and overpowered, grant me Thy assistance.

INSCRIPTION AT THE PALACE OF TIPOO SULTAN,

‘THE TIGER OF MYSORE’, SERINGAPATAM, 1799

GOVERNMENT OF INDIA ACT, 1833

An Act for effecting an Arrangement with the East India Company, and for the better Government of His Majesty’s Indian Territories, till the thirtieth day of April one thousand eight hundred and fifty-four …

SECTION 38:

PRESIDENCY OF FORT WILLIAM IN BENGAL TO BE DIVIDED INTO TWO PRESIDENCIES

The territories now subject to the government of the presidency of Fort William in Bengal shall be divided into two distinct presidencies, one of such presidencies in which shall be included Fort William aforesaid, to be styled the Presidency of Fort William in Bengal, and the other of such presidencies to be styled the Presidency of Agra; The court of directors to declare the limits from time to time of the several presidencies …

SECTION 39:

GOVERNMENT OF INDIA VESTED IN GOVERNOR GENERAL AND COUNSELLORS

The superintendence, direction, and control of the whole civil and military government of all the said territories and revenues in India shall be and is hereby vested in a governor general and counsellors, to be styled “The Governor General of India in Council” …

PART ONE

THE PRESIDENCY OF FORT ST GEORGE

I

Thugs

Kothapore, Northern Circars, February 1834

Bunda Ali, late of Haidarabad and now of Madras, counted himself the most fortunate of men – al-hamdu li-llāh. For he was a moonshee, a teacher of languages. Yet no mere teacher to the writers of ‘John Company’, honoured though that position be, but moonshee to His Britannic Majesty’s Sixth Regiment of Light Dragoons – ‘most senior, most honoured of all regiments in entire presidency of the Fort Saint George’, which he proclaimed proudly to each and all on first acquaintance. Angreze – Englishmen – of exalted rank paid him respects, he would tell them. There were, he said, many high-born officers in the regiment at Madras – sons of noblemen, sons of His Majesty’s highest ministers of the Court, sons of great zamindars (landowners) and men of affairs. He esteemed especially their sirdar, Colonel Matthew Hervey-sahib, who attended to the Hindoostanee (so near to the Urdu) with exemplary purpose (even though it was not the native language of Madras), and who showed much aptitude for many other tongues, including that of the inferior Tamul people; also his wife, a very great lady, who had received also his own wife and spoken with her as if someone high-born also as she (though to tell truth the father of his wife was bunnia, a merchant of corn, and money-lender).