The Kariyappa Family: Reading Caste and Class Through Three Kinds of Mobility
In a village near Koppal, the Kariyappa family's story is often quoted at the local degree college. Kariyappa's father was landless, worked as a farm labourer for a Gowda landlord, and could not read. Kariyappa studied in a government hostel, became a primary school teacher in 1998, and retired as headmaster. His son Ravi studied engineering on a government scholarship and now works in a private firm in Bengaluru; his income is more than ten times Kariyappa's pension. Ravi's sister Sunita married last year into a family of the same jati that owns 12 acres of irrigated land; the match was arranged by the two families. At the wedding, elders described the family as having 'come up'. A relative who migrated to Hubballi and now drives a cab says he has 'not moved up or down, only sideways'. The family keeps its original jati name in all documents and still attends the same jati council meetings.
1. Identify the type of mobility involved for Kariyappa, for Ravi and for the cab-driving relative, using the distinctions intergenerational/intragenerational and vertical/horizontal.
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Deciding rule: mobility is vertical only if the family's rank in the hierarchy of property, power and prestige changes. A change of job or place without a change of rank is horizontal. Intergenerational compares parent with child; intragenerational compares a person's own start with their later position.
- Kariyappa: upward vertical, and both intergenerational (against his labourer father) and intragenerational (his own life from hostel student to headmaster). Education, salary and pension all raise his rank.
- Ravi: upward vertical, intergenerational. The decisive comparison is father-to-son - engineering, private firm, income ten times the pension. Merely changing from student to employee is not itself mobility.
- Cab-driving relative: horizontal, and his own phrase 'only sideways' is sociologically correct. He changed place (village to Hubballi - spatial mobility) and occupation, but not his rank. Migration is not automatically upward.
So one family contains all three patterns. The judgement tested is that the label depends on which two positions are being compared and on which axis.
2. Is Sunita's marriage a case of social mobility? Identify the type and explain what it reveals about the relation between caste and class.
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It is mobility, but on one axis only - and that is the point.
- Caste axis: horizontal. The jati is unchanged; indeed the arrangement was made precisely to keep it unchanged. Endogamy is the core rule of caste, and this marriage obeys it.
- Class axis: upward vertical. She moves into a family with 12 acres of irrigated land, i.e. more property, higher local prestige and greater security. Marrying into a family of higher status within the same group is hypergamy.
The case shows that mobility does not have to cross the caste line to be real, and that caste endogamy can coexist with substantial class movement. The elders who say the family has 'come up' are reading class; the fact that the match was arranged within the jati shows caste still controls the most consequential decision a family makes.
A weak answer treats caste and class as alternatives. A strong answer says they are two intersecting hierarchies: Ravi rises in the class hierarchy while the family stays inside the caste boundary.
3. 'Caste has disappeared because Kariyappa's son is an engineer.' Evaluate this statement by testing three separate spheres.
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The statement confuses occupational change with the disappearance of a stratification system. Test three spheres:
- Occupation - changed. Ravi is an engineer, not a labourer; reservation and scholarships enabled this. Caste no longer fixes occupation.
- Marriage - unchanged. Sunita's match was within the jati, arranged by families. Since endogamy is the defining rule of caste, this is the decisive test, and it points the other way.
- Everyday organisation - largely unchanged. The jati name is used in documents and the jati council is still attended.
What has actually happened is a change of form: the ritual hierarchy of purity and pollution is weaker in public life, while caste survives as identity, network, marriage rule and basis of political mobilisation, now overlapping with class. Reservation itself shows the state still treats caste as operative.
Judgement to state explicitly: an answer must say in which sphere caste has weakened and in which it has not; a blanket 'disappeared' or 'unchanged' is equally unsupported.