What a tragic irony that the first major terrorist attack on Indian soil since General Pervez Musharraf made his famous speech should be against American property. The Americans were more ready to believe that the General had changed and could change Pakistan than we were. When US Secretary of State Collin Powell arrived in Islamabad post-speech he greeted Pakistan's foreign secretary like a long-lost brother (kiss on both cheeks and lingering handshake). He was less effusive when he greeted Indian officials in Delhi the next day but his message was clear: give the General a chance to prove that he has renounced radical Islam in favour of a gentler, less terrorist kind.

We were sceptical. Not just because we mistrust military dictators more than America does but because the General's condemnation of radical Islam came, from an Indian viewpoint, with an ominous caveat. The Taliban was bad, he said, and support for the jehad in Afghanistan was bad, as was terrorism in general, but in Kashmir the violence was of a nobler kind because it was a "freedom struggle". There was also that puzzling comment about Kashmir running "in our blood".

Despite this, the official Indian response was to welcome the General's condemnation of radical Islam and express the hope that his remarkable speech would be followed by some identifiable action. We have seen little of this so far. Our list of wanted terrorists was not just rejected for want of what the General calls "proof" but the Pakistani Government mocked it by suggesting that it had a list of its own. The terrorists came before the list did. This time in Kolkata with an attack on the American Center that killed several Indian policemen.

The question is, can Musharraf's Government be blamed for the attack? Or can he take the position that, like the Taliban, the Pakistani-bred terrorist groups operating in India are out of his control? This is possible but it is equally possible that the terrorist groups the General so willingly banned have reincarnated under new names.

This has happened before and sometimes, when Pakistan has been ruled by civilian governments, we have been told that this happens because the infamous Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) does not take its orders from civilian prime ministers. Does the ISI listen to the General? Does anybody? These are troubling questions that are more important than questioning the sincerity of Musharraf's words because if he cannot control Pakistan's radical Islamists chances of peace in the subcontinent are bleak.

The disturbing thing about the kind of radical Islam that has in recent years spread through the veins of Pakistan is that it is not restricted to a few groups or a few militant maulvis. It is an ideology that appears to have a place in the heart of the lower middle class as I discovered while interviewing people in the streets of Lahore and Karachi six months ago. On camera young men and women told me that they were ready to lay down their lives for Islam and that the chance to do so was there in Kashmir. Unemployed workers in Lahore, who said that they wanted peace with India so that they could go across the border in search of work, added that peace could only come when "India gives us Kashmir". What if India does not? Then, they said, they were ready to become martyrs in the cause of Islam and were ready to die in the Kashmiri jehad.

The sinister undercurrent of this passion for Islam is a hatred of Hindus. It is a hatred that appears to have been carefully nurtured through the distortions of history and blatant lies that Pakistani children are taught in the madarsas the General is now so keen on banning. These schools teach a world view so narrow that the only thing the children grow up knowing anything about is their religion. And this is of a form that divides humanity into believers and infidels so hatred for the great idol-worshipping country next door is inevitable.

Musharraf now tells us that he hopes to reform these schools by introducing secular subjects like science and maths. Fine, but what does he plan to do with the generation of radical Islamists that these schools have produced over the past 20 years? If he is going to stop exporting them to Kashmir and Afghanistan, where will they go? America? Europe?

Ridding Pakistan of radical Islam is going to be much harder than Powell realises and it will not happen at all if his new best friend, Musharraf, drags Kashmir into every foreign policy utterance he makes. If, on the other hand, he can be persuaded to think of things other than Kashmir when he talks to India, we might see a glimmer of hope for normalcy in the subcontinent. Who knows, we might even learn to cooperate in the war against terrorism. And when visa restrictions are relaxed and more Pakistanis visit India, they might discover that Hindus are not such bad people.