Nearly five decades after one of Bengal’s beloved fictional characters — Lalmohan Ganguly alias Jatayu — uttered those immortal lines in the film, Sonar Kella, not one but several dacoits of this once dacoit-infested land are likely to enter the proverbial hall of fame. The credit, ironically, goes to the daku’s great adversary: the police. State police personnel in Madhya Pradesh are apparently donating money so that India’s first ever Museum for Dacoits can see the light of day in Bhind. Of course, there is always a thin line separating the police from the philanthropist. Altruism may not be the only motivation here for the men in uniform. The museum, cops say, is necessary to tilt the scales. Popular culture has often embellished the lives of the outlaw, edging out the keeper of the law in the process. Bhind’s museum is expected to preserve not just larger-than-life dacoits but also the sacrifices made by their nemesis — the policemen.

The law and the lawless have clashed in the form of fierce contests; but, occasionally, their intersection has also resulted in a pursuit that was purely intellectual. India, once again, is a case in point. William Henry Sleeman’s success in hunting down the dreaded thuggee has, unfortunately, eclipsed his substantial literary output on the tribe of outlaws; many of Sleeman’s books can be read as sociological, albeit problematic, accounts of the gang. This cerebral engagement with the underbelly of society has been weakened by the depredations of ‘entertainment’. Museums dedicated to those who lived and died without doffing their hat to the law are not uncommon. But their claims as sites of pedagogical engagement can be specious. Historians, for instance, were up in arms when a proposed museum on Jack the Ripper and women’s history sought to cash in — the pun is intended — on the misogyny of the serial killer; the Mob Museum in Las Vegas — where else? — allows visitors to get married.

Bhind’s Dacoit Museum should remain immune to such theatrics. If its architects are serious about challenging the gratuitous glorification of the outlaw in cinema and politics and conserve the rich, layered legacy of the cop-and-robber story, they should think of inviting scholars, conservators, historians and investors et al to be a part of this welcome project. For the story of crime and punishment is never complete without an investigation of the social and historical conditions that produce both. Chambal and the Aravallis — Jatayu’s dacoit-infested country — are fecund territories for the sprouting of the outlaw precisely because of the convergence of such diverse factors as feudalism, economic penury, political patronage and an inhospitable terrain. The stories, each a unique blend of all or some of these causal histories, would deepen public awareness of the symbiotic relationship between delinquency and deprivation. Yet another consequence of the endeavour could be
the dissemination of the knowledge concerning the futility of violence. Dead men and women bearing arms teaching the living to lay down weapons could be the ideal tribute to dacoits.