NEW DELHI: Former foreign minister Khurshid Mahmud Kasuri was booed and told to go home on Tuesday by a gaggle of protesters at his lecture here on India-Pakistan peace prospects.

By Wednesday morning he was composure personified, engaging with his friends in the Indian media and pleading for peace at any cost.

The timing of his arrival for the lecture was of a piece, however, with his previous visit. That was when he was in India to promote his book Neither a Hawk Nor a Dove.

That time Mr Kasuri’s visit invited an even more violent reaction. Protests were staged by the Shiv Sena.

He was saved from physical harm by his host, Sudheendra Kulkarni, a peace activist who took the blow on himself, as the hoodlums smeared his face with black paint. Mr Kulkarni was credited with scripting former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s ‘Kumarakom Musings’, that led to a fresh thaw between the two countries.

Mr Kasuri must have just sat in the plane to Delhi when the death sentence was awarded to Kulbhushan Jadhav. The Indian had been convicted by a Pakistan military tribunal for spying.

Indians merely know him as a former naval commander who must be saved at any cost.

“In Pakistan, the military court awards death to our own civilian citizens,” Mr Kasuri explained to Dawn in a non-committal tone, though hoping that the crisis would be contained with deft diplomacy.

“Why am I here despite all the bad news that we read in our countries about each other?” he quizzed his audience on Tuesday at the Indian International Centre, while the chorus of protests refused to abate.

“In the present mood in India, forward movement is unlikely,” he said. “Nevertheless, this should not stand in the path of people with strong convictions and those who have personally seen, as I have, how quickly things can change between our countries.”

Mr Kasuri cautioned the hawks on both sides against the possibility of the standoff spiralling into a military conflict.

“India and Pakistan have both acquired a second strike nuclear capability. And it makes one shudder that many among us have failed to accept the ominous portent this implies for both countries and for the world.”

Some discussants spoke of a need for resumption of back channel contacts. Others said the contacts were already on.

Published in Dawn, April 13th, 2017