Locating the politics of ethical collective identities in postcolonial South India, this work explores the ways in which different cultural communities forge their self-understandings in terms of practical reason: with respect to ideas of what a good life truly is and how we should live ethically in practice. Drawing upon more than ten years of ethnographic fieldwork, the author discusses the ethical concepts, practices, and politics of the Adivasi community of J?nu Ku?umba, the state of Tamil Nadu, and the recently established religious discourse of the deity Sanesvara.