New Delhi, April 12 -- "Guilt is never to be doubted."- Franz Kafka, The Trial (1925)

Four words. No qualifier, no escape clause, no appeal. Kafka delivers what may be the most chilling sentence in all of Western literature with the calm authority of a verdict that was never in question.

In The Trial, this is not a philosophical position debated between equals. It is the operating principle of an entire system - one that Josef K. discovers, to his ruin, only after it has already consumed him. The court does not investigate guilt. It assumes it. The accused does not arrive as a person to be examined. He arrives as a case to be processed. His innocence is not a possibility the system is designed to entertain.

What makes the quote so unse...