Ethical Life in South Asia

Anand Pandian is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Johns Hopkins University. He is author of Crooked Stalks: Cultivating Virtue in South India.Daud Ali is Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of South Asia Studies, University of Pennsylvania. He is author of Courtly Culture and Political Life in Early Medieval India.

• Introduction / Anand Pandian and Daud AliPart 1. Traditions in Transmission1. The Subhas.ita as an Artifact of Ethical Life in Medieval India / Daud Ali2. Disciplining the Senses, Schooling the Mind: Inhabiting Virtue in the Tamil Tin.n.ai School / Bhavani Raman3. Ethical Traditions in Question: Diaspora Jainism and the Environmental and Animal Liberation Movements / James LaidlawPart 2. Ethics and Modernity4. Vernacular Capitalists and the Modern Subject in India: Law, Cultural Politics, and Market Ethics / Ritu Birla5. The Ethics of Textuality: The Protestant Sermon and the Tamil Public Sphere / Bernard Bate6. Empire, Ethics, and the Calling of History / Dipesh ChakrabartyPart 3. Practices of the Self7. Between Intuition and Judgment: Moral Creativity in Theravada Buddhist Ethics / Charles Hallisey8. Young Manliness: Ethical Culture in the Gymnasiums of the Medieval Deccan / Emma Flatt9. Ethical Subjects: Time, Timing, and Tellability / Leela Prasad10. Demoralizing Developments: Ethics, Class, and Student Power in Modern North India / Craig JeffreyPart 4. Ethical Lives of Others11. Living by Dying: Gandhi, Satyagraha, and the Warrior / Ajay Skaria12. Moral and Spiritual Striving in the Everyday: To Be a Muslim in Contemporary India / Veena Das13. Ethical Publicity: On Transplant Victims, Wounded Communities, and the Moral Demands of Dreaming / Lawrence CohenList of ContributorsIndex

"[A] welcome addition to the growing body of literature on ethics in South Asia. While not losing sight of the significance of texts and religion, the essays move the discussion . . . The recurring theme of embodiment of ethical knowledge through memorization and recitation is as much an important and useful intervention in the study of ethics, as it is in the study of the interface between text and performance in South Asia."—JRNL ASIAN STUDIES"Setting a novel and exciting agenda for the understanding of ways through which 'ethical lives' in South Asia are produced, debated and experienced in the every day, this volume will no doubt take a prominent place on the bookshelves of scholars and students researching ethics and morality in the subcontinent and beyond."—Pacific Affairs"This book is a competent and credible illustration of the richness of south Asian ethical traditions and the resources to be found there for a reorientation and renewal of our ethical sensitivity in changing times. It will be valuable book for anyone studying ethics in the south Asian context, and especially for historians and moral philosophers."—Economic and Political Weekly"This stimulating book well rewards a close and careful reading, and lays the foundation for much future research."—Biblio"This stimulating and original volume of essays invites the reader to a rewarding engagement with a wide diversity of moral traditions and lived ethical practices in South Asia. . . . [O]ffers a rich mix of anthropological, historical, and textual analysis and will be of interest to readers of diverse backgrounds."—Barbara D. Metcalf, University of Michigan