HUBBALLI  SUNDAY  SEPTEMBER 30, 2018  `7.00  PAGES 28  CITY EDITION INDONESIA TSUNAMI TOLL MAY CROSS 400, HUNDREDS MISSING Official toll climbed to 384 as of Saturday evening, a day after a tsunami struck the city of Palu, and several people were missing HOSPITALS FLOODED WITH PATIENTS BUILDINGS FLATTENED BY WAVES Even as rescuers scrambled to reach the affected region on the island of Sulawesi, hospitals struggled to cope with the influx of the injured so much so that many people were being treated in the open air, while other survivors helped retrieve the remains of P11 those. Major roads were also damaged in the disaster ■ ■ Video footage showed waves of water bringing down several buildings and inundate a large mosque. A landmark city bridge was destroyed, and a key access road badly damaged The tsunami was triggered by a quake just off Sulawesi at a depth of 10 km. Such shallow quakes tend to be more destructive 7.5 MAGNITUDE OF THE EARTHQUAKE THAT TRIGGERED THE TSUNAMI CHENNAI ■ MADURAI ■ VIJAYAWADA ■ BENGALURU ■ KOCHI ■ HYDERABAD ■ VISAKHAPATNAM ■ COIMBATORE ■ KOZHIKODE ■ THIRUVANANTHAPURAM ■ BELAGAVI ■ BHUBANESWAR ■ SHIVAMOGGA ■ MANGALURU ■ TIRUPATI ■ TIRUCHY ■ TIRUNELVELI ■ SAMBALPUR ■ HUBBALLI ■ DHARMAPURI ■ KOTTAYAM ■ KANNUR ■ VILLUPURAM ■ KOLLAM ■ WARANGAL ■ TADEPALLIGUDEM ■ NAGAPATTINAM ■ THRISSUR ■ KALABURAGI India can’t talk to those who glorify terrorists: Sushma SABARIMALA: THE REALITY BY MANOJ KUMAR SONTHALIA R eligion can clash with law, faith need not. It is natural for an old civilisation like India to have old practices revered by the faithful. Justice is best when it recognises that there is no offence in the logic of the faithful being at variance with the logic of the rationalist. In the case of the Sabarimala deity, the faithful have strong arguments in their favour. By choosing not to accept these, the Supreme Court trod a path it need not have. As irony would have it, devotees have already rejected the judgment allowing unrestricted entry of women to the holy steps. Ground level reports suggest that women devotees, as distinct from women activists, will not trek to the hilltop because they believe it would destroy the raison d’etre of the celibate Lord and the rituals thereof. That article of faith is the crux of the matter. The debate was wrongly pegged on the taboo attached to menstruality of women. That of course needs to be thrown out. The issue before the court was related to Ayyappa’s celibacy The Sabarimala Ayyappa is a . Naishtika Brahmachari practising the severest form of celibacy. In that state, he is restricted from being in the presence of women. There are other Ayyappa temples where he is not in the Brahmachari form and there are no restrictions on women in those temples. The restrictions in Sabarimala are more on Ayyappa than on women and they are selfimposed because he does not want his penance to be disturbed. Those below 10 years are children and those above 50 are motherly , hence the age limitations; they have nothing to do with womanly periods. The majority view as enunciated by Justice Chandrachud got it wrong when it linked the exclusion of women with the menstrual status and called it a form of untouchability What the court . also failed to recognise is that it is not a general exclusion; it is specific to Sabarimala and unrelated to periods. Of course these are matters of faith and modernists are within their right to dismiss them as mumbo jumbo. But it would be an invitation to constitutional complications if the judiciary were to dismiss matters of faith in response to the sentiments of rights activists. Nor can it ignore the counter argument raised by the dissenting judge that “judicial review of religious practices.... would negate the freedom to practice one’s religion according to one’s faith and beliefs”. It is unfortunate that the Supreme Court ignored the importance of faith in a 5,000-year-old society and delivered a judgment that toppled a revered tradition based on the very concept of the deity concerned. This issue was not about morality, equal rights or emancipation but about a traditional ritual that wasn’t harmful to society as such. Therefore, it should not be mixed up with repressive practices such as Sati and widow abandonment. Those were social evils which needed to be abolished. Sabarimala is a nuanced story about a God, with freedom to follow or not follow. Why demolish a ritual based on belief ? There is a danger that this judgment may be the beginning of a new age of faith-denouncing and faith-asserting litigations. Justice Indu Malhotra herself noted that if courts begin to get into an area that is best avoided, they will surely open the floodgates for every belief of every religion to be questioned even by non-believers. Are the courts prepared for such an avalanche? Is the nation? It will be a precarious path that could impact the social order itself. If and when a review petition comes up, the honourable court will have a chance to take these possibilities also into account. India is different from modern democracies of the West. Our society is different. We ignore such realities at our peril. External affairs minister hits out at Pakistan, says Imran Khan has had no effect on its terror policy RAMANANDA SENGUPTA @ New Delhi SUSHMA SPEAK It has become something of a habit with Pakistan to throw the dust of deceit and deception against India in order to provide some thin cover for its own guilt On the one hand, we want to fight terrorism; on the other, we cannot define it. This is why terrorists with a price on their head are celebrated , financed and armed as liberation heroes by a country that remains a member of the United Nations. Our neighbour’s expertise is not restricted to spawning grounds for terrorism; it is also an expert in trying to mask malevolence with verbal duplicity. DEFINING TERRORISM India has been arguing from this podium that lists are not enough to check terrorists and their protectors. We need to bring them to accountability through international law. In 1996, India proposed a draft document on international terrorism. Till today, that has remained a draft. sources,” she said. On the second challenge, Swaraj said, EXTERNAL Affairs Minister Sushma “The demon of terrorism now stalks the Swaraj on Saturday hit out at Pakistan at world, at a faster pace somewhere, a slowthe UN General Assembly saying that de- er pace elsewhere, but life threatening , spite a change in government, the neigh- everywhere.” The foreign minister noted that in Inbouring country was fomenting terrordia’s case, “terrorism is bred not in some ism and even glorifying it. faraway land, but across our Debunking Pakistani asserborder to the west”, pointing a tions that India was sabotaging UN needs finger at Pakistan. peace talks, she said New Delhi radical Explaining how Islamabad believed “talks are the only rareforms betrayed even Washington, tional means to resolve the most Swaraj said, “Osama Bin Ladcomplex of disputes. Talks with We need to en, the architect and ideologue Pakistan have begun many change the of 9/11 was given safe haven in times. If they stopped, it was institution’s only because of Pakistan’s head and heart Pakistan, a country that claimed to be America’s friend behaviour”. to make both and ally .” Addressing the 73rd session of compatible to She said even after Osama the UNGA, Swaraj said, “Our contemporary was taken out by US special neighbour’s expertise is not rereality. Reform forces, Pakistan continued to stricted to spawning grounds for must begin behave as if nothing had terrorism; it is also an expert in right now happened. trying to mask malevolence with “Pakistan’s commitment to verbal duplicity .” Swaraj said climate change and terror- terrorism as an instrument of official ism were the two biggest existential policy has not abated one bit. Neither has . threats to the world. “To save the world its belief in hypocrisy The killers of 9/11 from the adverse effects of climate met their fate; but the mastermind of change, developed nations must lift the 26/11 Hafiz Saeed still roams the streets ,” deprived with financial and technical re- of Pakistan with impunity she said. I did not kill Gauri, was offered `25 lakh to confess, says Waghmare EXPRESS NEWS SERVICE @ Bengaluru Parashuram Waghmare, the man accused of killing Gauri Lankesh, dropped a bombshell on Saturday when he told the media gathered outside the court that the special investigation team (SIT) probing the murder had offered him `25 lakh to confess to the crime. Waghmare, along with another suspect Manohar Edave and 11 other accused, were produced before the court by the CID. While being taken away, Waghmare alleged that the sleuths had also tortured him for a week and threatened to fix his brothers in other cases if he did not confess. Both Waghmare and Edave were questioned by journalists through the police vehicle which was on its way to the Central Prison from the court. The video of their statement went viral in the social media on Saturday In the . video, Waghmare can be heard saying, “I was offered `25-30 lakh by an officer when I was being interrogated. The officials con- Parashuram Waghmare in the police van vinced me that the money would help my family members. Otherwise, they threatened that they would fix my brothers and friends. During eight days of interrogation, they forced me to sign blank papers. While video recording my statement, the officials told me exactly what I had to tell.” Speaking to Express, B K Singh, Additional Commissioner of Police who heads the SIT, said, “The allegations made by Waghmare and Edave are baseless.I feel that it is not worth reacting to their allegations. Why they did not open their mouth before the judge when they were produced before the court after their arrest?” P6 INFERTILITY The Great Baby Race PLUS 12 PAGES WITH THIS ISSUE MISSING THE WOODS Panel wants green rules for infra projects diluted R I C H A S H A R M A @ New Delhi THERE must be a standard set of rules for diversion of forest land for infrastructure projects under 10 sectors, including thermal power, mining and hydroelectricity, an expert committee under the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change has recommended. Environmentalists, however, say this would be retrograde. As of now, the rules to get forest clearance are different for each of these sectors. The Forest Advisory Com- mittee (FAC), in a meeting on August 30, recommended standard Stage-I and Stage-II forest clearance conditions for hydroelectric, industry, irrigation, railway, mining, road, thermal, transmission, wind power and pipeline projects. “The FAC... accepted the recommendation of Dr Tejender Singh’s committee regarding standard and general conditions for different projects. The project-wise standard Stage-I and Stage-II conditions along with tem- plate of forwarding letter with regard to various categories of projects is recommended to be incorporated with specific conditions in all approvals granted under the provisions of FCA 1980,” read the minutes of the meeting, which were submitted to the ministry . The recommendation for infrastructure projects comes within 100 days of the Environment ministry releasing similar standard conditions for clearance in 25 industrial sectors. Kanchi Kohli, legal research director, CPR-Namati Environment Justice Programme, said the very idea of standard rules was retrograde as it meant getting environmental clearance was merely an administrative formality . “Each case of diversion (of forest land) is unique and requires deep inquiry of impact before decisions are taken. Through such a process, the government might be able to expedite approvals, but will fail in environmental stewardship.” ‘Excessive force’, UP police admit after constable kills man NAMITA BAJPAI @ Lucknow AN assistant sales manager of a multinational company was shot dead by a police constable early on Saturday after he allegedly tried to drive away in his SUV despite being asked to stop. Vivek Tewari, 38, was in the SUV with a former colleague, Sana Khan, when the incident took place in the posh Gomti Nagar area here around 1.30 am, the police said. Although there were conflicting claims over the shooting, constable Prashant Kumar and his colleague Sandeep Kumar have been arrested and a case registered against them for murder. The police admitted that “excessive force” was used, and both have been sacked. The post-mortem report said Vivek sustained a gunshot in his chin and may have died because of loss of blood.