The Sanatan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sab­ha is ad­vis­ing Hin­du tem­ples and devo­tees to be­gin prayer ser­vices ear­li­er and con­clude at 8 pm. This is in light of the lim­it­ed state of emer­gency im­posed by the Gov­ern­ment on Sun­day. Ac­cord­ing to a state­ment from the Ma­ha Sab­ha yes­ter­day, this is to af­ford devo­tees suf­fi­cient time to re­turn to their homes. "We are mind­ful that dur­ing this height­ened sea­son of re­li­gious ac­tiv­i­ty, many per­sons with­in the Hin­du and oth­er com­mu­ni­ties will be en­gaged in var­i­ous forms of wor­ship and de­vo­tions and prayer that may run some­times 11 pm or be­yond," the re­lease said.

The state­ment said con­di­tions might seem ex­treme dur­ing the pe­ri­od of the state of emer­gency. The Ma­ha Sab­ha, how­ev­er, called on all cit­i­zens to hold firm as the Gov­ern­ment and armed forces rid the so­ci­ety of crim­i­nal­i­ty and law­less­ness.The state­ment de­scribed the lim­it­ed state of emer­gency as long over­due, giv­en the re­cent his­to­ry and sta­tis­tics as re­lat­ed to crime in the coun­try. The Ma­ha Sab­ha said it was ap­pre­cia­tive of the fact that cur­fews and oth­er polic­ing en­hance­ment strate­gies af­fect­ed on­ly the crime hot spots and not the en­tire coun­try.