“How do people come to live as they ought to live?” and “why do people still fail to live as they ought to live”? Setting out from these simple questions (p. 3), Anand Pandian explores the moral horizons of cultivators and their families of the Piramalai Kallar caste in K. G. Patti, a village of the Cumbum Valley west of Madurai in South India. Embarking from the moral challenges faced by these villagers in their everyday lives, Pandian tracks the complex interplay of a precolonial Tamil ethic imaginaire with colonial projects of policing and “Kallar Reclamation,” and the development agendas of the postcolonial Indian state in forming the moral horizons that inform the efforts of contemporary Piramalai Kallars to live virtuous lives. In placing the moral concerns of K. G. Patti's modern inhabitants in relation to the moral horizons and projects of the past, Pandian demonstrates the close correspondence between...
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