The incident that sparked off the hostility was the eveteasing of two girls from the Lady Hardinge Medical College at a college party. One of the boys involved was from the general category -- read upper caste -- and the other from the reserved category. They were stopped by four other students and beaten up by friends of the boys involved. One of them was beaten up by students from the reserved category. ``That remained in the minds of that small circle of students,'' said a student. And following this, on February 24 students of reserved category were beaten up.

The incident has divided them sharply and fear psuchosis gripped the insititute. When it was declared, through the public announcement system, that all general category students gather on the ground floor, the order was obeyed mostly out of fear. ``We did not want to beisolated,'' he says.Students of the reserved category who are staging a sit-in say that the principal or the warden never once visited them and asked them about their problems. ``If they had appeared to care for us, we would have listened to anything,'' they say.

They are demanding the removal of warden K K Sharma, who they accuse of supporting the general category students, and suspension of students involved in the clashes. The warden has already agreed to step down. And the inquiry panel of the college will announce the action against those students involved in the incident, says principal B B L Agarwal. ``I just want all my students to be back in the classes,'' he says.

Still there are sane voices. ``There is no caste war. We have friends on both sides,'' students of the general category said. ``Maybe we have reason to complain because they get a book bank which has 15 copies of any new book while we get just a single copy of that book for reference.'' When the boys of the R cat and G cat (their termsfor reserved and general categories) launch into the language of `they and them', the charges and countercharges never end. ``When we were freshers, they would ask us our names and on knowing that we were from R cat they would just let us go without teasing. But we know we were not considered even worth ragging,'' says a student.Students and the authorities fear the worst as politicians like Ram Vilas Paswan have begun to visit the agitating students. ``They do not realise that the politicians will only exploit them,'' Agarwal says. But students say they turn to them as the principal or the warden do not symapthise with them.