Introduction

Indian Diamonds 165
phasises the point that their actions directly grow out of their religious devotion in
the same way as the Brahmins murder Ablewhite to fulfil their vow to Vishnu.
Franklin Blake consequently ascribes their behaviour to the well-known “influence
of oriental religions” (Collins, Moonstone 48).
The assaults on Mr. Luker and Godfrey Ablewhite can be read as oblique allusions
to Thuggee. The assertion that human lives are irrelevant for them further
stresses the connection (81). The Indians’ method of strangling their victims leads
Suvendrini Perera to the assumption that Collins derived them directly from Taylor’s
novel (113). The Brahmins’ devotion to Vishnu and fulfilling of the god’s
command is reminiscent of the worship of Kali which is at the core of Thuggee.
However, rather than directly drawing on Taylor, Collins might as well have used
the most prominent stereotypes of his times which grew from Taylor’s influential
depictions as well as the more recent events of the Mutiny.
The mysterious “Indian plot” (Collins, Moonstone 283) at the centre of English
society also articulates undefined fears of infiltration. It is as Caroline Reitz remarks
the original constellation from which the English detective figure evolved
and accordingly casts the conspiratorial pacts as his antagonist The “Indian plot”
(283) suggests that there must be a hidden network of conspirators to support the
pursuit of the diamond. The edges of this network are visible in the worker in Mr.
Luker’s shop, the letter the Indians receive in prison and the dummy who hires
their rooms. Their dealings, however, remain hidden and impenetrable. The depiction
of the Indians as subversive and invisible also leads to their perception as
“spies” 17 (285) by Bruffsuggesting invisibility but uncanny omnipresence. At the
centre of this conspiracy is the diamond imbued with a secret meaning generated
by a secret society which the English characters cannot read or even misread.
The motif of an Indian diamond at the centre of an Indian conspiracy is taken
up again two decades later in The Sign of Four. Jonathan enters the secret pact to
murder and steal the Agra treasure. When “the Four” are betrayed by John Sholto
and Captain Morstan, Small seeks vengeance for his accomplices. It is further
suggested that Small’s implication in the otherwise exclusively Indian pact is part
of his corruption and downfall in the colony, which, in the end, sees him in the
place of a typical native guarded by white guards.
Doyle’s novel explicitly links the Mutiny with the pact, but he might also have
drawn on the contemporary fear of European secret societies which were thought
to be imported to Britain by emigrant revolutionaries from the continent. The
myth of Indian Thuggee is thus complemented by a literary current in novels of
the end of the century to revolve around repentant terrorists who cannot escape
their ex-comrades and are bound by an unbreakable oath (Ascari 54). Doyle alludes
to this notion in his first novel A Study in Scarlet, where the obvious but
17 The method of spying, however, opens another interesting parallel as Betteredge confesses that
the “natural occupations of people situated as we [Betteredge and Rosanna]” are “prying, and
peeping, and listening” (Collins, Moonstone 149).