Word: punjab
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Caste rivalries and a fight over offerings at a cash-rich Sikh temple in Vienna echoed far and wide on Monday as sectarian violence once again erupted in India's Sikh-majority state of Punjab. At least two people have been killed and 14 injured since news reached Punjab yesterday via text messages and mobile phones that a Sikh preacher of a lower-caste sect, 57-year-old Sant Rama Nand, had been shot dead in a clash in a temple in Austria. Thousands of lower-caste Sikhs took to Punjab's streets armed with swords and batons, burning buses...
...Over the years, the quaint little gurdwara on the Rudolfsheim Street on the outskirts of Vienna has become a hub of Sikh separatists who supported an insurgency in Punjab during the 1980s and 1990s. The insurgency was eventually stamped down by an iron-fisted state, and many of its supporters sought and received political asylum in Europe. As Austria's legal South Asian community has become more established, thousands of illegal Sikh migrants from all over Europe have gravitated there. "The gurdwara was lush with offerings from a nostalgic and large-hearted diaspora," says Ramesh Vinayak, who heads the Punjab...
...Around the same time, the Ravidasias, a lower-caste community who are not considered Sikhs though the groups share some similarities, including worship in gurdwaras, swelled in numbers among Austria's Indian diaspora. Disgruntled lower-caste youths from an increasingly prosperous Punjab - where the landed castes have been reaping the benefits of the Green Revolution since the 1950s and 1960s - were making their way to Europe in droves. "What we see now is a result of rising Dalit assertion," says Vinayak. "The lower castes set up their own gurdwara, splitting the congregation and the [revenue from the] offerings...
...fighting in Swat masks far more serious problems. In Waziristan, a region on the Afghan border, security forces have ceded control to the militants. Outlawed sectarian groups are gaining a foothold in Punjab province. And in the financial capital of Karachi, where Pakistani Taliban insurgents raise funds, ethnic clashes claimed more than 30 lives last month. When U.S. President Barack Obama commented during an April news conference that the Pakistani government did not "seem to have the capacity to deliver basic services - schools, health care, rule of law, a judicial system that works for the majority of the people...
...major cities such as Islamabad and Lahore - though an influx into Karachi of people displaced by the fighting in the tribal areas has swelled that city's Pashtun population, which has in turn raised communal tensions there. While the Taliban is reported to have made some inroads in southern Punjab and has linked up with small militant groups based in the province, it remains a minor presence in those parts of the country where the majority of Pakistanis live. Even in the most generous assessments of their fighting strength, they are very lightly armed and outnumbered by the army...