This chapter focuses on one of the two manifestations of caste consciousness, the phenomenon of so called 'caste war'. It explores how caste can divide modern Indians to the point of systematic armed violence between those of high- and low-caste origin. It is true that those involved in 'caste wars' since the 1960s have generally mixed the language of jati and varna with references to faith, class and nationality, defining themselves and their opponents not just as embodiments of caste-based `community', but as landlords and tenants, capitalists and workers, oppressors and oppressed. Since the 1970s the ideals of the `secular' nation-state have been regularly inverted by groups claiming to be under threat from the real or imagined aggression of militant `Dalits'. In many of the widely reported conflicts, `caste war' violence has tended to feed back and forth between urban centres and the rural hinterlands from which towns like Banaras and Aurangabad draw many of their students and factory workers.