collapse

The "Late Victorian Holocausts" (c. 1870s–1890s) were a collision of El Niño-induced droughts and British laissez-faire capitalism that killed 30–60 million people. For the "criminal tribes" (a colonial label for itinerant groups like the Badhak, Sansi, Kanjar, and Bawaria), this period was a double apocalypse: they faced mass starvation from the famine while simultaneously being hunted, caged, and criminalized by the newly enacted Criminal Tribes Act (CTA) of 1871. [1] The following details outline their specific survival strategies and the colonial state's mechanisms of control.

1. The Double Burden: Famine & The Criminal Tribes Act

While the general peasantry starved due to grain exports and market fundamentalism, groups like the Badhak faced a targeted war on their existence. The CTA labeled them "hereditary criminals," creating a legal framework to forcibly settle them just as the famine made settlement a death sentence. [2]

• The Trap: Famines historically triggered migration to food-rich areas. The CTA, however, criminalized movement. To leave their prescribed district to find food was a non-bailable offense.
• Forced Sedentarization: The British "planted out" these tribes into agricultural settlements to "civilize" them. In reality, these were often barren lands where they were expected to farm without skills or water, making them the first to starve when rains failed. [3, 4]

2. Survival Strategies of the "Criminal" Networks## A. Dietary "Iron Cast" & Forbidden Foods

While caste Hindus starved rather than break dietary taboos, the "criminal" tribes survived because their traditional diets were broader and more resilient. [1]

• Scavenging & "Unclean" Meat: Groups like the Sansi and Kanjars were often stigmatized for eating animals that died of natural causes or were considered ritually unclean, such as jackals, lizards, field rats, and porcupines. During the famine, this taboo became a survival advantage.
• Forest Knowledge: They relied on "famine foods" invisible to the British and settling peasants:
• Roots & Tubers: Digging for deep-rooted yam varieties and kanta sag (thorny greens) that survived drought.
  • Processing Toxins: They possessed specific knowledge on how to leach toxins out of drought-resistant but poisonous seeds and barks to make them edible. [3]

B. Strategic Mobility & "Chaotic Oscillation"

The Badhak and similar groups used their mastery of disguise and movement to evade the "dragnet" of the famine police.

• Fragmenting the Clan: To avoid detection, large tribal caravans broke into tiny family units. If a whole clan moved, they were arrested; if a single family moved, they might pass as distressed peasants.
• The "Baghdass" Resistance: In regions like Bengal, groups identified as baghdass (likely a phonetic variation or offshoot of Badhak/Bawaria networks) used stilts to traverse flooded or difficult terrain rapidly, raiding grain stores and vanishing before police could respond.
• Absconding from Relief Camps: When forced into "famine relief works" (labor camps with Buchenwald-level rations), many tribespeople simply absconded. They preferred the risk of police capture to the certainty of slow starvation in the camps.

C. Weaponizing Kinship & Gender

The state tried to break their networks by separating families, but the tribes used their social structures to survive.

• Marriage as a Passport: Women often negotiated marriages to men in "un-proclaimed" districts. Since the police surveillance was often patrilineal or focused on the male "head," women could sometimes move more freely or use marriage to legally transfer their residence to a safer zone.
• Refusal to Co-operate: Records show women refusing to join their "husbands" in penal settlements, effectively breaking the state's attempt to concentrate them in one controllable (and starving) location.

D. "Social Banditry" & The Economy of Desperation

With their traditional livelihoods (performing, herbal medicine, genealogies) destroyed by the economic collapse, many returned to or intensified "predatory" survival.

• Grain Riots & Dacoity: British officials reported a spike in "dacoity" (gang robbery) during famines. For the tribes, this wasn't "crime" in the colonial sense; it was a moral economy. They raided grain trains and government storehouses—targets that were hoarding food while the people died.
• Cattle Lifting: Stealing cattle wasn't just for food; it was a tradeable asset. In a famine, a cow could be traded for sacks of grain if moved to a region where prices were slightly better.

3. Fate of the Badhak Specifically

By the Late Victorian period, the "Badhak" as a cohesive entity had been largely shattered by the earlier anti-Thuggee campaigns (1830s–1850s).

• Assimilation & Hiding: Survivors had likely assimilated into other related groups like the Bawaria or Sansi to escape the specific "Badhak" bounty hunters.
• Indentured Labor: Many were funneled into the "coolie" trade, shipped off to plantations in the Caribbean or Fiji, effectively "deporting" the problem.
• The "Badhak" Legacy: Their specific survival techniques—rapid movement, disguise, and tight information networks—lived on in the groups that absorbed them. The British obsession with "hereditary criminal tribes" was, in part, a paranoid fear that the Badhak thugees had never really gone away, but had just morphed into these famine-resistant bands. The "Late Victorian Holocausts" (c. 1870s–1890s) were a collision of El Niño-induced droughts and British laissez-faire capitalism that killed 30–60 million people. For the "criminal tribes" (a colonial label for itinerant groups like the Badhak, Sansi, Kanjar, and Bawaria), this period was a double apocalypse: they faced mass starvation from the famine while simultaneously being hunted, caged, and criminalized by the newly enacted Criminal Tribes Act (CTA) of 1871. [1, 5, 6]

1. The Double Burden: Famine & The Criminal Tribes Act

While the general peasantry starved due to grain exports and market fundamentalism, groups like the Badhak faced a targeted war on their existence. The CTA labeled them "hereditary criminals," creating a legal framework to forcibly settle them just as the famine made settlement a death sentence. [2, 4]

• The Trap: Famines historically triggered migration to food-rich areas. The CTA, however, criminalized movement. To leave their prescribed district to find food was a non-bailable offense.
• Forced Sedentarization: The British "planted out" these tribes into agricultural settlements to "civilize" them. In reality, these were often barren lands where they were expected to farm without skills or water, making them the first to starve when rains failed.

2. Survival Strategies of the "Criminal" Networks## A. Dietary "Iron Cast" & Forbidden Foods

While caste Hindus starved rather than break dietary taboos, the "criminal" tribes survived because their traditional diets were broader and more resilient. [8]

• Scavenging & "Unclean" Meat: Groups like the Sansi and Kanjars were often stigmatized for eating animals that died of natural causes or were considered ritually unclean, such as jackals, lizards, field rats, and porcupines. During the famine, this taboo became a survival advantage.
• Forest Knowledge: They relied on "famine foods" invisible to the British and settling peasants:
• Roots & Tubers: Digging for deep-rooted yam varieties and kanta sag (thorny greens) that survived drought.
  • Processing Toxins: They possessed specific knowledge on how to leach toxins out of drought-resistant but poisonous seeds and barks to make them edible.

B. Strategic Mobility & "Chaotic Oscillation"

The Badhak and similar groups used their mastery of disguise and movement to evade the "dragnet" of the famine police.

• Fragmenting the Clan: To avoid detection, large tribal caravans broke into tiny family units. If a whole clan moved, they were arrested; if a single family moved, they might pass as distressed peasants.
• The "Baghdass" Resistance: In regions like Bengal, groups identified as baghdass (likely a phonetic variation or offshoot of Badhak/Bawaria networks) used stilts to traverse flooded or difficult terrain rapidly, raiding grain stores and vanishing before police could respond.
• Absconding from Relief Camps: When forced into "famine relief works" (labor camps with Buchenwald-level rations), many tribespeople simply absconded. They preferred the risk of police capture to the certainty of slow starvation in the camps. [7, 11]

C. Weaponizing Kinship & Gender

The state tried to break their networks by separating families, but the tribes used their social structures to survive.

• Marriage as a Passport: Women often negotiated marriages to men in "un-proclaimed" districts. Since the police surveillance was often patrilineal or focused on the male "head," women could sometimes move more freely or use marriage to legally transfer their residence to a safer zone.
• Refusal to Co-operate: Records show women refusing to join their "husbands" in penal settlements, effectively breaking the state's attempt to concentrate them in one controllable (and starving) location. [7]

D. "Social Banditry" & The Economy of Desperation

With their traditional livelihoods (performing, herbal medicine, genealogies) destroyed by the economic collapse, many returned to or intensified "predatory" survival.

• Grain Riots & Dacoity: British officials reported a spike in "dacoity" (gang robbery) during famines. For the tribes, this wasn't "crime" in the colonial sense; it was a moral economy. They raided grain trains and government storehouses—targets that were hoarding food while the people died.
• Cattle Lifting: Stealing cattle wasn't just for food; it was a tradeable asset. In a famine, a cow could be traded for sacks of grain if moved to a region where prices were slightly better. [12]

3. Fate of the Badhak Specifically By the Late Victorian period, the "Badhak" as a cohesive entity