Sikhs wielding swords clashed inside the compound of their religion’s holiest shrine today, the 30th anniversary of a controversial raid by Indian security forces that flushed out separatist militants holed up in the temple.
Television footage showed Sikhs rushing out of the Golden Temple in Amritsar in northern India, brandishing their swords against each other in a violent confrontation in which several people were injured.
A police official said the clashes were triggered by a minor argument between temple employees and an unnamed fringe Sikh group when commemorating the victims of the 1984 temple raid.
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Peace has since been restored, said the official, who declined to be named because he is not authorized to speak to the media.
“The violent clashes will be investigated and action will be taken against those who are accused,” said Giani Gurbachan Singh, a leader of the elected body that manages Sikh temples.
Former prime minister Indira Gandhi was assassinated by her Sikh bodyguards in 1984 over the army's storming of the temple to crush a Sikh militant movement that sought a separate homeland. Nearly 3,000 people were killed in retaliatory riots against the Sikhs.
India has suffered an upsurge of violence in many forms since a general election last month won by prime minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
In the most heinous crime, two girls were raped and hanged in a village in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh. Three men have been arrested over the killing, and two policemen suspected of helping to cover up the crime.
This week, a lynch mob in the western city of Pune killed a Muslim information technology worker. Seventeen men with links to a little-known radical Hindu group have been arrested over the killing, apparently provoked by a controversial Facebook post.
Mr Modi, who was sworn in on May 26th, has not commented on any of the episodes of violence.
Reuters