Pulavar to Prophet. A 19th-Century Religious Life

This chapter provides a biographical account of Ramalingar. The chapter, therefore, attempts to give a comprehensive account of Ramalingar’s life and works, which is intended to function as a template against the backdrop of which we will understand the partial accounts delineated in the subsequent chapters of the book. In doing so, it moreover shows that any modern narrative of Ramalingar’s life continues to constantly grapple with the conundrum of the close interpellation of the “secular” and the “religious” in the biographical representation even if it attempts to underplay this interpellation within the context of Tamil modernity.