TWO PROTESTERS were shot dead by police in northern India’s Punjab state yesterday as rioters rampaged across the province after a widely revered, low-caste Sikh religious leader died in a clash between rival groups at a Sikh temple in Vienna, Austria.
The rioters, armed with sticks, swords and bricks, were protesting the death of Sant Ramanand (56) and defied a curfew across many Punjab towns including Sikhism’s holy city of Amritsar and the nearby industrial town of Jalandhar, torching train carriages, burning buses, destroying public and private property and blocking highways.
Railway traffic on the busy route between the federal capital New Delhi and the garrison town of Jammu in the north was badly crippled as it passed through Punjab.
The army has been deployed in Jalandhar to contain the rioters and is on standby in nearby towns populated by outraged followers of the Sikh guru who had travelled to Vienna to conduct a special service among his laity.
Jalandhar is home to many low-caste Sikhs, a large number of whom are Sant Ramanad’s followers.
Officials in the state capital Chandigarh said scores of people had been injured as police opened fire and burst tear gas shells on crowds at several places in a feeble attempt at containing them.
Sant Ramanand was attacked on Sunday by six fellow Sikhs armed with knives and a pistol following a dispute over a sermon he was delivering at a gurdwara or Sikh temple in Vienna, and he died of his injuries early yesterday.
Another preacher, Sant Nirajnan Dass (66), also from Punjab who was among 15 other people injured in the attack, is reportedly stable.
Leaders at the four-year-old Sikh temple in Vienna had, in keeping with the founding principles of Sikhism, consistently campaigned against India’s all-pervasive, centuries-old caste system that divides people into hundreds of groups defined by livelihood, class and ethnicity.
But caste remained deeply rooted in Sikhism, founded in the 15th century, and the temple’s stand angered other reportedly upper-caste Sikhs in Austria who believed that its practitioners were opposing their religions traditions.
There are about 2,800 Sikhs in Austria and some 25 million worldwide, most of them in Punjab and northern India.
Meanwhile, prime minister Manmohan Singh, the first Sikh to occupy India’s top political post, said he was “deeply distressed” by the attack and subsequent violence. “Whatever the provocation, it is important to maintain peace and harmony among different sections of the people,” Mr Singh said, adding that Sikhism preached tolerance and harmony.