Never have I felt so ashamed to be from India nor so despairing of its future.

The poor young woman, brutally assaulted by a pack of thugs, not named in order to protect the family's privacy, is dead, leaving behind a grieving family and a billion broken hearts. As she lies in a sleep beyond disturbing, will the nation atone by lifting the shroud of sexual violence from the body politic?

Mahatma Gandhi had promised that come independence, the tears would be wiped from every Indian eye. Good thing he was a Hindu and cremated, else he would surely have been spinning in his grave at the serial desecrations of the temples-in-the-air he constructed.