Word: sikhs
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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...
...removing her head covering in Rollin’s courtroom. Nor is the discriminatory treatment limited to women or even the Muslim population as a whole. The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) addressed another such case of a Muslim woman in Valdosta last year, and Jasmeen Nanda, a Sikh man wearing a turban, and Rabbi Friedman, a Jewish man wearing a yarmulke, were also told to remove their religious headgear in the courtroom...
...benediction (the opening and closing prayers) at his Inauguration. Graham did the same for Bill Clinton in 1993 and again in 1997. The decision to delegate the religious role to Graham seemed a reasonable alternative to filling the stage with an ever-growing number of Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Sikh, Buddhist, Hindu and Baha'i clergy. The famous Evangelist regularly topped the list of people Americans most admired, and he prayed in fairly broad terms, referring just to "God" and using the formulation "I pray" instead of "we pray" to make clear that he was not imposing his Christian prayer...