The last thing first: I am now getting known as soft on Pakistanis, and soft on Muslims as well, the irony being that my VC, who is my benefactor, is an Aligarh product (also in service there, here on secondment). As for telling the kids that they need to see people as people, not as national stereotypes, at this university, which is a bit of an elite place (they qualify through the Common Law Admission Test, which some 40,000 take, of some 1,400 qualify for seats), they are not too bad, not like the run of the mill colleges. Frankly, I tend to see people who think in a regressive way as abnormal, and I think that it is more accurate to think of ourselves as normal.
I went on to my first Pakistani site after Bombay, to find out who wanted to kill us, and why. That was Professor Adil Najam's All Things Pakistan, and there cannot possibly be a more decent, more civilised introduction to Pakistan. I actually became fast friends with some of them.
That led me to Pak Tea House, where I was taken by some of my new friends, and that was almost home. It still is, in some ways.
Some six of us, three from each country, coincidentally, then formed a private mailing list, when PTH was over-run by Hindutva-vadis and it became too much for our stomachs. That has grown to ten, but will stay very small, because we discuss the most difficult subjects, sometimes get angry with each other, but always make peace at the end of play. We are hoping to get together in the flesh, although there have been some small meetings on the side, for instance, when the remarkable Yasser Latif Hamdani came to Delhi (his account was quite ambiguous; liked Delhi, and some Dilli-wallahs, was quite critical about the condition of Muslims in Delhi, and about some bumptious Indians - which just proves that he is perfectly normal). That meeting sounds too difficult to organise in Lahore, our first wish, or even in Delhi, our second, so it will probably happen in Dubai (so what's new?). Some other side meetings have happened in London.
We have just fought a very bitter war on the Kashmir issue in that list, and one of my closest friends and I were locked in mortal combat for nearly two weeks - truce was declared and peace broke out a few days ago. You will be amused to learn that the range of options there very closely mirrored the options generated here. The only difference is that there was no name-calling there, as there has been here. But that's because we are very close friends there.
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