But for four nights pleas for calm have been ignored.
Calls for calm have come from a series of international statesmen, including Kofi Annan, the former UN secretary-general who is acting as the African Union's special envoy, and Barack Obama, whose father was born in Kenya.
The affair has escalated into a political crisis for Narendra Modi, a member of the Bharatiya Janata party (BJP) and the state's chief minister, whose appeals for calm have failed to quell public anger.
US apologies for the desecration – and an appeal from Mr Karzai for calm – have failed to temper the anger of Afghans, who staged rallies in seven provinces yesterday, sparking clashes with Afghan police and security forces that left at least five demonstrators dead.
Requests for calm have come even from the White House, but there is a sense that the young people on the streets have the moral support of many among the older generations within their community here, who also see this as an opportunity for long overdue change.
But for now, an appearance of calm has been restored in the Jokhang area.
But a major reason for the calm has been the measured public health response.
One reason for the calm has been the presence over the last year of a European Union military force of some 3,300 soldiers, drawn from 26 countries, but nearly half coming from France, the old colonial power, working with 850 United Nations officers.
This provides another possible explanation for why CALM has been linked to risk of Alzheimer's disease since CALM should play a key role in this endocytic process by selecting the R-SNAREs needed both for endocytic vesicle/endosome fusion and for subsequent fusion events along the endocytic pathway.
For now, some calm has returned to Beach Channel.
