Couldn't agree more!

Swapan Dasgupta, in his column in Rediff believes that India and Pakistan belong to different civilisations.

We love to believe that the kindness shown to a Pakistani child with a heart ailment will melt even the most hardened souls across the border. We love to believe that the overpowering strength of the hospitality we experience during casual visits to Lahore means that politics is the only hurdle to rapprochement. And we love to believe, as Rajiv Gandhi once put it, that the Taj Mahal is as much theirs as Mohenjodaro is ours.

The time for such romantic piffle is over. Actually, there was never any basis for it.

Exactly!!

Likewise it is too naive to think that cricket or any other socio-cultural exchange will thaw the frozen attitudes on both sides. Pakistan's proclaimed strategic objective is to bleed India through a thousand cuts. With this larger strategic intent in mind, Pakistan may shift tactics and postures, but it will never walk the path of peace with India. Any Pakistani government who tries to take this path will be hounded at home and branded traitors. I wonder why successive governments in India have ignored this simple fact.

For too long India has allowed its responses to be guided by the sanctimoniousness of a professional peace lobby. It is time we ignored these appeasers of jihad. Let the prime minister's pronouncement that India cannot negotiate with terrorists be the final word on Pakistan.

Amen!