The left-hand/right-hand distinction has disappeared in the Salem-Erode region of Tamilnadu. People in their late thirties remember hearing about the sections in their childhood, but they are vague concerning the meaning of the division. Older Kaikkoolars in their late seventies living in Erode, however, recall the division vividly. They relate tales of heated conflict and murder, and quarrels between the moieties over their respective rights in festivals and the uses of temples in surrounding villages. Piecing this information together, it is apparent that the left-hand/right-hand distinction was an integral part of status reckoning in the Salem-Erode region as late as the 1920s, but that by the 1940s the distinction was rapidly fading, and by the late 1970s only a few people were still aware of it. The disappearance of the distinction corresponds to the increasing Indian participation in local government that culminated in Indian independence in 1947. This correspondence is more than coincidental.

The left-hand/right-hand distinction was in part a symbolic way (Appadurai 1974) of incorporating the two differently integrated systems of castes – the nonbound-mode and the bound-mode castes – into a single cohesive social order.