Sikhism

Sikh extremists dressed as police sprayed automatic weapons fire at Hindus in the city of Ludhiana today, killing at least 13 people and wounding 18 others in three separate attacks, officials said. Hours after the attacks, soldiers were placed on alert throughout Punjab, a Sikh-dominated state of 18 million people. The Punjab state government clamped a curfew on Ludhiana in hopes of preventing retaliatory violence. K. R.

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa on Sunday greeted hundreds of Sikhs as an "integral part of the economy and culture" of Los Angeles and representative of the diversity for which the city is famous. "What makes L.A. so special is that we come here from every corner of the Earth to participate in the American dream," the mayor said during a prayer service at the Los Angeles Convention Center, part of a celebration for Baisakhi Day, the India-based religion's annual holiday of renewal and rebirth.

A Canadian judge Wednesday cleared two Sikhs of involvement in the 1985 bombing of an Air India jetliner that killed 329 people, the deadliest such terrorist strike. British Columbia Supreme Court Judge Ian Bruce Josephson found Ripudaman Singh Malik and Ajaib Singh Bagri not guilty of murder and conspiracy in connection with the bombing over the Atlantic, as well as a related explosion at Tokyo's Narita International Airport that killed two people.

Stefanie Holzman, clad in a hand-embroidered wool Norwegian dance costume, spent Sunday morning crisply turning and gliding across a stage at the Cultural Diversity Fair in Huntington Beach. Between dances, she explained the moves the ensemble was performing to a crowd of families sitting on a grassy knoll in Huntington Central Park.

Each morning, Angad Singh carefully wraps yards of fabric into a tight turban atop his head before heading out into a world that doesn't always understand him or his Sikh faith. "Where are you from?" they ask the 22-year-old, who was born and raised in the San Fernando Valley, if they ask anything at all. "Are you Muslim?" "Why are you wearing that?" "People don't know who we are," said Singh, who is about to begin classes at UCLA Law School. "I can tell they have [other] questions they are too afraid to ask. " Sikhs make up the fifth-largest religion in the world, with more than a quarter of a million followers in the U.S. and close to 20,000 in Southern California, but they are little understood.

On a recent Sunday in a classroom at the Sikh temple in Pacoima, nine young students sat scattered across four pews, an incongruous reminder of a time the building was used by a church. As the teacher, Pami Kaur, read aloud a series of words in Punjabi, the mainly 7- to 9-year-old students slowly repeated them, sounding each one out before writing it down. Some balanced notebooks on their laps as others knelt, using the pews as desks. " Kireh , I said, kireh ," said Kaur, repeating a word that means "ant," as she looked over one little girl's notebook.

Defying the high priests of their faith, thousands of Sikhs massed in the mustard fields of this Punjab village Friday in support of a political leader who was recently excommunicated by the priests. At least 100,000 Sikhs, including many from neighboring states, roared their approval of a resolution supporting Surjit Singh Barnala, chief minister of Punjab state and leader of Akali Dal, the Sikh political party. Thousands of policemen, some with machine guns, guarded against terrorist attack.

As he has since he opened for business six years ago, Nermal Singh proudly flies the American flag at his Camarillo convenience store. But the patriotic gesture has taken on new meaning in recent weeks, especially for a man who wears a turban and sports a beard. Singh is a member of Ventura County's Sikh community and adheres to the tenets of a 500-year-old religion that originated in India by wearing a beard and turban, which is considered the crown of spirituality.

Like Egypt and Mesopotamia, India is a cradle of civilization. But unlike the people of those other regions, the author writes, today's Indians remain clearly linked to their ancient traditions: They "still believe in the same religion(s), they still worship the same gods and they still chant the same verses and hymns, which they recited 4,000 years ago. " Travelers to this subcontinent encounter a living museum of a vast slice of humankind, one-seventh of which lives in India.

It is hard for any religious group--Christian or non-Christian--to build a new house of worship in the well-populated San Fernando Valley without neighbors objecting to the prospect of increased traffic and noise. But what are the chances of a religious group whose men often wear turbans and long beards, converse in a foreign tongue and who, tradition has it, carry a small sword tucked away in their garb?