India, July 25 -- You have been wronged. A leaked paper is theft of your years. This time the theft has taken young lives. No honest voice can speak of these weeks without first bowing to the dead. Let that be said first, because it is true.

And let a second thing be said just as plainly, so that nobody twists this article later. I am not against protesting on the streets. A day may come when I myself say: now march. This article has only one condition, and it is the condition every examination hall enforces: first prove you are fit to sit the paper. What follows is not a prohibition; it is a fitness test. The fitness demanded here is not perfection; it is direction.

The state stands indicted. An administration under which question pape...