Crooked Stalks: Cultivating Virtue in South India

344 Pages·2009·2.092 MB·English

by  Anand Pandian

Crooked Stalks

anand pandian
Crooked Stalks
Cultivating Virtue
in South India
duke university press
durham and london
2009
∫ 2009
Duke University Press
All rights reserved.
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper $
Designed by Katy Clove
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication
Data appear on the last printed page of this book.
Earlier versions of parts of chapter 2 originally appeared
in ‘‘Securing the Rural Citizen: The Anti-Kallar Movement of 1896,’’
Indian Economic and Social History Review 42, no. 1 (2005): 1–39.
Earlier versions of parts of chapter 4 originally appeared
in ‘‘Devoted to Development: Moral Progress, Ethical Work, and
Divine Favor in South India,’’ Anthropological Theory 8, no. 2 (2008): 159–79.
To my parents
and grandparents—
for we grew in their shade,
va¯hlai atfi va¯hlai . . .
Valiant kings of unflagging grace and ceaseless tribute remain resplendent,
the scales of merchants stay in balance, the Brahmins do not forget the Vedas, and
righteousness does not falter for a single day, all due to the steadily sprouting nature
of the paddy fields of those who do not mistake the proper way of the world.
—attributed to the tamil poet kampar,
ca. eleventh century c.e.
Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Note on Transliteration xv
Introduction 1
one ‘‘A Rough Spade for a Rugged Landscape’’
On Savage Selves and More Civil Places 31
two ‘‘What Remains of the Harvest
When the Fence Grazes the Crop?’’
On the Proper Violence of Agrarian Citizenship 65
three ‘‘The Life of the Thief
Leaves the Belly Always Boiling’’
On the Nature and Restraint
of the Criminal Animal 101
four ‘‘Millets Sown Yield Millets,
Evil Sown Yields Evil’’
On the Moral Returns of Agrarian Toil 141
five ‘‘Let the Water for the Paddy
Also Irrigate the Grass’’
On the Sympathies of an Aqueous Self 181
Epilogue 221
Notes 241
Glossary 283
Bibliography 289
Index 309

Acknowledgments
The Tamil Tirukkurhal suggests that the aid of those who give freely—
without weighing returns—is greater than the sea in the span of its
goodness. Seeking to convey my gratitude to those who have made this
book possible, I find myself confronted by a debt beyond measure. Were
I to try and chart out the many entangled ways in which every word and
phrase of this book has been born of the relations I have enjoyed in the
years of its writing, I would quickly face the conundrum met by Jorge
Luis Borges’s mythical cartographer: a map whose quest for accurate
witness would lead it to surpass in size the very thing that it was map-
ping. I can therefore do no more here than to name some of my debts,
with the hope that those I name and fail to name may find some trace of
their counsel in the text that follows.
This book began as a dissertation at the University of California,
Berkeley, and I am grateful for the wisdom and friendship of my teach-
ers. Donald Moore first welcomed me into the field of anthropology, and
I hope that this work may somehow attest to his acumen, inspiration,
and meticulous care. Lawrence Cohen also roused me with the brilliance
of his imagination and the humanity of his example. I am deeply grate-
ful to a few other mentors who have nurtured my work and especially
this project with acute and generous attention: Dipesh Chakrabarty,
Val Daniel, Veena Das, Akhil Gupta, M. S. S. Pandian, Indira Peterson,
Hugh RaΔes, and K. Sivaramakrishnan. Pandian has been the most
long-standing of all of my teachers, and I have him to thank in par-
ticular for the kernel of the present project. Tom Dumm, George and