How ‘thuggery’ became part of the British political lexicon 

When the British prime minister denounced the riots that erupted around the UK a fortnight ago as “far-right thuggery,” the irony of the use of the word “thug” by a Brit against fellow Brits was not lost on English language mavens with a side interest in the history of colonial India. In a speech on Aug. 4, Keir Starmer vowed that the authorities would “do whatever it takes to bring these thugs to justice,” referring to the anti-immigration demonstrators blamed for a week of disturbances following a mass stabbing in the northwestern English seaside town of Southport.

A similar tough-on-crime approach was adopted by Lord William Bentinck, the first British governor-general of India, in the 1820s when he announced his intention to eradicate the menace of the thuggee cult in central India. Bandits who operated with impunity for almost five centuries, the original thugs — Indian males of diverse faiths — specialized in intermingling with long-distance travelers, earning their confidence before waylaying them and looting their valuables.

Almost two centuries after Maj. Gen. William Henry Sleeman, with the backing of Bentinck, captured the last of the thugs (cheats), executing or imprisoning them, the only thing that remains of the organized Indian gangs of professional robbers and murderers is an entry in English-language dictionaries that means “a tough and violent man, especially a criminal.” Although movie buffs will additionally point to the centrality of thuggee suppression in the plots of two enduringly popular Hollywood adventure films, “Gunga Din” and “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.”

The original thugs specialized in waylaying long-distance travelers.

Arnab Neil Sengupta

Mercifully, the modern-day British approximation of a thug, no matter how despicable his behavior, bears no similarity to the homicidal Indian version of yore. And although there was surely no sinister reason Starmer plumped for the word “thug” in the context of the anti-immigration riots, the demographic trends that some suspect contributed to the online disinformation-fueled outbreak of violence have a purely coincidental connection to the subcontinent. In 2022, India replaced Romania as the most common country of birth for non-UK-born mothers, and Pakistan as the most common country of birth for non-UK born fathers. But that is another story for another day.

Starmer’s immediate predecessor, of course, was the embodiment of immigration’s positive impact on Britain. Rishi Sunak was born in 1980 to East African-born parents of Indian Punjabi descent who themselves were born in former British colonies: his father in Kenya, his mother in Tanganyika (modern-day Tanzania). For years, the British encouraged migration from India through the establishment of indentured labor schemes and the hiring of Indian nationals for positions in the civil service in numerous African nations. But as “Africanization” policies began to be adopted by newly independent African nations in the 1960s and ’70s, members of the religiously diverse and enterprising Indian community living in Africa under British colonial rule, such as the Sunaks, migrated to the UK.

Among the other significant upsides of the British Empire’s legacy is the long list of English words — of which “thuggery” is just one — that originated in the languages of foreign colonies. On the one hand, the expansion of the empire unwittingly facilitated the borrowing of words related to food, culture, administration and more from Hindi, Tamil, Arabic, Malay and African languages. On the other hand, trade routes and interactions with diverse cultures brought new vocabulary into English in such areas of strategic importance to the empire as commerce, navigation and goods.

Life is a lot easier for present-day English speakers and writers because of the availability for use of pundit, guru, juggernaut, jungle, chutney, shampoo, pajamas and avatar. These are among the 70 words that underline the strong influence India — the jewel in the crown — has had on English, although the total number of words of Indian origin that are part of the Oxford English Dictionary is much greater — about 900. That said, the sources and contexts of words that find their way into mainstream English lexicon have changed since decolonization and the collapse of the British Empire on which, at its peak, the sun supposedly never set. The shift has little to do with the fact that net migration has exceeded the UK’s natural population change for most of the past two decades, accounting for 60 percent of population growth between 2004 and 2022.

People’s faith and confidence in UK politicians has plummeted. 

Arnab Neil Sengupta

In Pax Americana, as opposed to Pax Britannica, the introduction of foreign words into the English vocabulary has been influenced heavily by the rapid pace of globalization, driven by the internet, mass media and global travel. Instead of former British colonies, the geographical sources of new words have been as varied as Japan (karaoke, sushi, karate, bonsai), Germany (schadenfreude, weltanschauung), and French (deja vu, chichi, avant-garde), particularly in the realms of culture, food, technology and science. The rise of global pop culture, social media and fusion cuisine has done its bit as well to introduce slang and terms from various languages into English, notably K-pop and kimchi from Korean, and anime and emoji from Japanese.

If the state of the English language was a reliable indicator of the health of the British, or American, society, there would be little or no cause for concern. Instead of protests, marches and riots by the politically disaffected, places such as Southport, Sunderland, Hartlepool and Rotherham would have seen spontaneous multiracial gatherings of people singing “God Save the King.” But the hard truth, according to the latest British Social Attitudes survey, released just before the July 4 election, is that faith in the effectiveness and integrity of the country’s wider political system has plummeted. “All in all, it appears that people’s trust in governments and politicians, and confidence in their systems of government, is as low now as it has ever been over the last 50 years, if not lower,” the survey said.

Amid the scenes of civil disorder and the heated debates in the UK last week over whether the riots were a cause or a symptom, it was somewhat heartening to note that an Indian word that entered the English lexicon in the 19th century in a law-and-order context came in handy for a British prime minister in the 21st century to get his tough message across. It would be even more heartening to see steps swiftly taken to bring the UK’s fractured communities together and heal the wounds of racial distrust so that the need for Downing Street to use a scary word like “thuggery” does not arise again.

• Arnab Neil Sengupta is a senior editor at Arab News. X: @arnabnsg