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Preachers, politics, primordial passions

In times less driven by primordial religious passions, Saturday's kitsch-laden re-enactment of Guru Gobind Singh's baptism of the first Khalsa Sikhs might have provoked nothing but wry humour. Eccentricity is, after all, a well-established part of India's religious landscape. But the fallout from Saccha Sauda founder Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh's performance — seen by the clerical establishment as heretical — has left dozens injured in still-unfolding clashes across Punjab, Jammu and Kashmir, and New Delhi. Indeed the religious fury has cut across national frontiers, with diasporic Sikh neoconservative websites joining the fray in the hope of revitalising their fundamentalist constituency. Many commentators have drawn parallels with the 1978 clashes between the Khalsa and the heterodox Nirankari sect, which laid the foundations for the decade of Khalistan terror. Like the Nirankaris, Mr. Gurmeet Singh's sect supports the Congress. It was instrumental in the party's surprising, if ultimately pyrrhic, victories in the Shiromani Akali Dal's (SAD) south Punjab heartland during the recent Assembly elections. However, the fault line this time is not religious. The real battle is over that ugly issue most politicians in Punjab like to pretend does not exist — caste.

While the Indian media tend to be suffused with images of Punjab's prosperity, it is often forgotten that the State is also the site of the kinds of caste apartheid that gave birth to the politics of the Bahujan Samaj Party's founder, Kanshi Ram. Almost one in three residents of Punjab belongs to the Scheduled Castes — the highest percentage in India — and atrocities against them have been mounting. Ever since the seizure of a shrine at Talhan by upper-caste villagers provoked large-scale rioting, there has been a string of violent attacks on both Sikh and Hindu Dalits. In response, Dalits have increasingly turned from established faiths to new spiritual leaders who articulate their anger. In 2001, the spiritual leader Piara Singh Bhaniarawala set off a small-scale version of the ongoing violence when he released the Bhavsagar Granth, a 2,704 page religious text. Suffused with sakhis, or miracle stories, extolling the spiritual powers of Mr. Bhaniarawala, the Bhavsagar Granth was intended to supplant the Guru Granth Sahib in Dalit Sikh homes. Punjab's government unsuccessfully prosecuted Mr. Bhaniarawala but did nothing to address his constituency's grievances. Neither did the clerics who railed against the preacher. Soon establishment clerics will meet to discuss their response to the challenge thrown at them by Mr. Gurmeet Singh. The kinds of reflexive responses that can be expected are evident in the Delhi Sikh Gurudwara Management Committee's shocking recent decision to expel clean-shaven Sikh students, and those sporting short hair, from the schools it runs. It takes little to see that such chauvinism strengthens the case of competing fundamentalists. Where clerics go, SAD tends to follow. But if Punjab is to avert a wider caste conflagration, the State government must steer clear of questions of theology - and instead direct its efforts at addressing the causes of Dalit anger.

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