I surprised myself by typing the words "paedophiles in India" a couple of days ago. I had never felt the need to do this, because a lot of us simply don't consider sexual attacks against children as part of our everyday discourse. We are, after all, usually occupied by other attacks, such as those on our freedom of speech, or the routine harassment of Indian women that millions of us grow up and start to accept as part of our culture. We are also turning into a nation that spends more time and energy protecting cows than human beings, but that is a topic for another day.

The idea of looking up crimes against children was sparked by the extraordinary outpouring of positive and negative press coverage surrounding a documentary about Michael Jackson. I watched it, eventually, and the opinions it elicited from others who did raised a number of uncomfortable questions.