Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories, written between 1887 and 1927, are famed for their puzzles, eccentric detective, and foggy London settings. But behind the gas lamps and cobbled streets is the looming shadow of the British Empire—especially India, the crown jewel of Victorian colonial ambition. A deeper reading of the Holmes canon reveals that India is not a mere backdrop, but a rich source of mystery, trauma, and imperial tension.
This post explores the key Indian references in the Sherlock Holmes stories, the historical realities they reflect, and what they reveal about how Victorian England saw its empire.
I. India in The Sign of Four (1890)
Among all Holmes stories, The Sign of Four stands out as the most deeply embedded in Indian history and colonial themes.
Key Indian References:
• The Indian Rebellion of 1857: The plot revolves around a treasure looted during the rebellion. British officers Major Sholto and Captain Morstan betray Indian convicts and flee with the Agra Treasure.
• Characters: Jonathan Small, a former British soldier-turned-prisoner, Tonga, a tribal man from the Andaman Islands, who come to England to exact retribution and claim the treasure.
Though intended as exotic, these portrayal reflects colonial stereotypes.
• Themes: Treachery, imperial plunder, racial anxiety, and the blurred line between empire and criminality.
More about Agra
Who has not heard about one of the Wonders of the World , the Taj Mahal, the hauntingly beautiful mausoleum built by the Mogul emperor in honor of his wife Mumtaz who died in childbirth.
There is of course the Agra Fort which was the nearest big British military post to Delhi, the headquarters of the Mogul kingdom, which was in the waning period of its rule.
Historical Context: The Sepoy Mutiny of 1857
Known in British texts as the “Mutiny,” but often called India’s First War of Independence, the 1857 rebellion began with Indian soldiers (sepoys) revolting over the use of animal fat in cartridges. But the anger ran deeper triggered by political overreach, economic exploitation, and cultural insensitivity. Key figures like Rani Lakshmibai, Begum Hazrat Mahal, and Nana Sahib led uprisings against British forces. Though the rebellion was eventually crushed, it led to the dissolution of the East India Company, and Britain took direct control of India in 1858.
While the Canon mentions atrocities perpetrated by the Sepoys there is no mention of the same perpetrated by the British which included tying suspected rebels to cannons and blowing them to smithereens.
II. “The Speckled Band” and the Mythical Swamp Adder
In "The Adventure of the Speckled Band" (1892), India is once again the source of a deadly mystery.
The Plot:
Dr. Grimesby Roylott, a violent former colonial doctor, uses a swamp adder, the deadliest snake in India” to murder his stepdaughter in a locked room.
The Truth About the Snake:
The swamp adder is fictional. Several deadly species may have inspired Conan Doyle (Russell’s Viper, Common Krait, Indian Cobra), but none can be trained as depicted. The snake serves as orientalist horror, using exotic animals as symbols of imperial fear and fascination.
The assertion by Holmes that the venom of this snake can kill in a few seconds is clearly incorrect. It can take many minutes to hours depending on the size of the victim and the amount of venom injected.
None of these snakes can be tamed to where they will slither up and down a rope on command! Likewise, milk supposedly provided to the snake by Dr Roylott is not part of a snake’s diet. A juicy mouse is always preferred.
III. Watson and the Afghan Wars
Dr. John H. Watson’s backstory begins with war. In A Study in Scarlet, we learn he was wounded while serving as an army surgeon in Afghanistan.
Historical Background: The Second Anglo-Afghan War (1878–1880)
As part of the “Great Game” between Britain and Russia. Britain sought to install a friendly Afghan ruler to block Russian influence.
After Dr Watson joined the Northumberland Fusiliers, and after basic training he was sent off to India where the British were in a state of war with Afghanistan.
His ship docked at the port of Bombay, now renamed Mumbai, also called the Gateway of India.
One can only imagine his excitement and trepidation as the train chugged out of the station bound on its journey up the coast of western India thence to New Delhi (most likely) and across the fertile plains of Punjab (now partly in Pakistan and India), and finally to the rugged terrain of the Pak-Afghanistan border, to the garrison town of Peshawar ,the last major outpost in British India.
His travels then took him to Kandahar, in Afghanistan, the next staging area, and onwards to the battle of Maiwand. The British-Indian army was defeated by the Afghan forces in that battle and had to beat a hasty retreat to Peshawar.
During this battle he sustained an injury by a “Jezail bullet." The Jezail is a gun with a long barrel, up to 5-6 feet in length, and the effective range of this gun was 300-400 yards, whereas the range of British guns were limited to about 200 yards! These guns were essentially assembled by the Afghans, in their own homes and villages.
The Afghans hid amid the crevices and gullies of the hilly terrain and picked off the officers and NCOs one by one, and once their enemy was whittled down, they would then attack in force.
Poor Dr Watson recovered from the Injury to be laid low by “Enteric fever," also called Typhoid fever. in those pre-antibiotic days, the mortality and morbidity were quite high up to 35%.
Present Day Afghanistan and Pakistan
The picture below shows the Durand line drawn by the British, to delineate Afghanistan and Pakistan but as noted in the rust-colored shaded area, the Pashtun area straddles the line, and to this day this line is not accepted by the Afghans in its entirety! The Pashtuns are in the majority in Afghanistan and most of the Taliban then and now, came from this group.
They were originally displaced by the Soviet invasion, to Pakistan, and as kids many of them attended local seminaries or Madrasas where they had some religious education. They were imbued with the fervor to teach the Soviets a lesson and became willing fighters and were able to cross this poorly guarded line to engage the Soviet Army, with help from outside forces.
Once the American forces occupied Afghanistan, the same process repeated itself and now these new forces were on the receiving end of this cycle of violence.
There was no external force that was able to ever subdue and rule over the Afghans for any length of time, and so history repeated itself, time and again.
IV. “The Crooked Man” and the Cawnpore Massacre
This story, in The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, returns explicitly to the 1857 rebellion, focusing on betrayal during the Siege of Cawnpore. This city on the Indo-Gangetic plain had a large British Cantonment, about 300 kms from Agra.
It was from this city that the British Brigadier Edward Greathead liberated Agra Fort. The interesting part here is that the British Indian army had mainly British officers, but the enlisted men were drawn from the local population.
V. Other Exotic Elements from India
India, in the Holmes stories also serve as a source of strange animals and eerie customs: monkey glands in “The Creeping Man,” hints of Eastern superstition in “The Sussex Vampire,” and the cheetah and baboon in "The Speckled Band."
Final Reflections: Why India Matters in Sherlock Holmes
India in Conan Doyle’s fiction functions as a narrative source of crime, a psychological trigger for trauma, and a cultural symbol of imperial anxiety and angst. These stories reveal the emotional and political entanglements of British colonialism, illustrating how the echoes of empire permeate even the most quintessentially British detective tales.
What’s your take on India’s presence in the Holmes stories? Have you noticed other colonial echoes in classic British fiction? That could be a topic for another day!
