Tens of thousands of Sikh Canadians celebrated the Sikh New Year in Toronto on Sunday, amid worries a fresh outbreak of violence within the community could mar celebrations.
Toronto police were on hand to control crowds and monitor traffic at the city’s annual Khalsa Day parade, which commemorates the founding of the Khalsa order of Sikhism. The march was expected to draw up to 80,000 people and include religious speeches in the heart of downtown Toronto.
“We are not anticipating any problems, but we will be prepared to deal with anything,” Staff Sergeant Peter Troup said.
Last week, a fight broke out between two Sikh factions inside a temple in Brampton, northwest of Toronto, sending four people to the hospital.
Militants inside the temple brandished hammers, machetes and construction knives, while hundreds of people screamed and shoved each other around. Five people have been charged with assault, police said.
The brawl was reportedly over a power struggle to control the temple, amid allegations of mismanaging funds.
At another Sikh center in Brampton, well-known Sikh lawyer Manjit Mangat was stabbed with a kirpan dagger early this month. Mangat survived the attack.
Federal police, meanwhile, are investigating an online posting calling for the murder of Canada’s top Sikh politician, Liberal Minister of Parliament Ujjal Dosanjh, after he warned of rising Sikh extremism in this country.
“Someone shoot him ASAP,” read a comment posted on the Facebook site titled “Ujjal Dosanjh is a Sikh Traitor,” the National Post newspaper reported.
Another posting branded Dosanjh, a former premier of British Columbia and federal justice minister from 2004 to 2006, as a “rat in our midst,” a “scumbag traitor and an insult to the Sikh religion.”
Dosanjh, who was savagely beaten in 1985 after speaking out against religious violence, warned in a recent interview that Sikh extremism in Canada — blamed for the 1985 Air India bombing that killed all 329 people aboard — was “getting worse.”
“It’s more entrenched, it’s more sophisticated and sometimes it’s double-faced,” he said.
His comments echoed concerns expressed by Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to his Canadian counterpart Stephen Harper over growing support by Canadian Sikhs for militants in Punjab.
The World Sikh Organization of Canada (WSO) sought to downplay perceptions of growing extremism among Sikhs in Canada.
“Some recent threats against Ujjal Dosanjh have been made by unknown persons claiming to be Sikh,” it said in a statement. “These have been used to support the indictment that extremism is rampant and on the rise in the Canadian Sikh community. Nothing could be further from the truth.”
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