This chapter explores the views aired in the subcontinent's emerging public arena, looking briefly at the early nineteenth century, but concentrating primarily on from the 1870s to the early 1930s. It examines why many Indian polemicists identified caste as a topic of vital concern for the modern nation, and seeks to identify the conceptual roots of the caste debates, as well as their intellectual and ideological consequences. The chapter also explores the ideas of the many Indians who made their mark in controversies about the spiritual and political meanings of caste. It discusses the conventional Hindu ideas about the low and unclean nature of 'untouchables'. Since the First World War, jati and varna were being so widely identified as expressions of Aryan/Hindu 'race genius', many theorists sought to distinguish between supposedly good and bad manifestations of 'caste spirit', and exalted the idealised solidarities of the twice-born as the embodiment of national faith and a cohesive national morality.