• It will establish, once and for all, that terrorism in any form will not be tolerated even if it has official sanction.

• It will restore the secular spirit of India’s most liberal city, where sweat has always been more important than blood, and the cosmopolitan has always superseded the communal.

• It will ensure that even justice delayed is better than no justice at all.

• But, most importantly, it will prove that those in power are not above the law — a fundamental precept of any democratic system. This is precisely why the Srikrishna Commission is much more than a tit-for-tat trial to mollify aggrieved Muslims. And also why ignoring it is a dangerous precedent for the future of Indian democracy.