6 - Social competition, caste conflict and manifestations of Karāva power

Summary

The previous chapter confirmed that in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries a substantial proportion of the Sinhalese rich and the Sinhalese in prestigious positions were drawn from the Karāva caste. While their relative share was comparatively large, it will be evident that the number of Karāva who used the avenues of social mobility to advantage were relatively few. One can, on the evidence presented so far, speak only of ‘the rise of a Karāva elite’ rather than the ‘rise of the Karāva’.

This reconstruction has now brought us to a junction where the story takes two directions: one seeks to explain how and why such a successful elite emerged from within the Karāva caste rather than other castes. This is our primary interest. But first we must look at the social and political struggles of the Karāva under the inspiration of their emerging elite families or older headmen families. These families found that their social and ritual status was not congruent with their economic power. Taking advantage of the loosening of caste-regulated restrictions on life-style and the relaxations in caste-regulated administrative practice during British times, they set out to improve their social station and that of the Karāva caste as a whole. This raises questions regarding the degree to which these elite families were responding to the sentiments of the Karāva people, and whether one is justified in considering the Karāva to have possessed a sense of community before the Karāva elite developed into an articulate force. These are questions that have been hotly debated with regard to upwardly mobile castes in India during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.