``If that rocket is bringing peace and prosperity and a message of love, then its alright,'' said Ambassador Khalili, Afghanistan's ambassador to India, adding, ``It's good if the names of our kings are used in a good way. But this is different. It's like making an atomic bomb, whose only function is to kill people and you call it `Gandhi'. The people of India are not going to like that,'' he said.

Khalili's view is echoed by one of Afghanistan's best-known historians, Alhaj-Azizuddin Wakili Popalzai, who has been living as a refugee in a South Delhi colony for four years. ``They (Pakistan) don't have a past, they don't have leaders themselves, that's why they have to use the names of our kings,'' he said.

The alert Popalzai, now 80, is also an expert of the `Ghaznavi' period. Hedid not mince words when he added, ``Unlike in India, where great emperors like Ashoka and Chandragupta Maurya built huge empires which reached as far north as Taxila, Pakistan has no such history.'' He went on to add: ``If Pakistan was our friend, they should respect our historical names.''

Khalili said his reaction was a common one among Afghans living back home as well as expatriates abroad. Evidently, the weekly Persian magazine Meezan or `Balance', very popular among the Afghan expatriate population, has also voiced the same view in recent issues.

Khalili was, however, not willing to vouch for the views of the Taliban militia, an Afghan group which currently rules Kabul and is recognised only by Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the UAE. It is commonly believed that the Taliban, which controls 85 per cent of Afghanistan, gets armed as well as financial support from these countries. Islamabad has named its maiden ballistic missile `Ghauri' after the Afghan king, Muhammed of Ghor, so called because he camefrom the southern Afghan province of Ghor. The Afghan invader finally defeated the Indian king Prithviraj Chauhan in 1192 AD, after plundering several Indian cities.

According to one view, the naming of `Ghauri' was a deliberate act of verbal warfare, since the Indian missile is called `Prithvi' (Islamabad mistakenly thought this was an abbreviated version of `Prithviraj', but `Prithvi' means `Earth' in Hindustani). But what has really angered the Afghans is that their neighbours are not going to stop at `Ghauri', but are going to call subsequent missiles `Ghaznavi' -- the name of another of their kings -- and `Baburi', after the first Mughal invader of India, an Uzbek who came from the Ferghana valley, located in present-day Uzbekistan.