Nehru told us, March 27 -- "When the world sleeps," Jawaharlal Nehru said, "India will awake to light and freedom". More than 75 years from that momentous occasion on August 15, 1947, when we should be celebrating how that light and freedom nourished us and made us proud citizens of a nation that stands tall on the values we may cherish, India has slipped into a very different phase. It is painful and it may not be inappropriate to say at this stage that darkness descends as freedom is being robbed, democracy is being crushed, and India is sleepwalking into a collapse.

The collapse is not sudden; it has been coming for some time now in the face of a creeping capture of institutions, key individuals and agencies who have all in one way or...