Last April, a religious edict was handed down by the Sikhism's highest leader at the Golden Temple, Ranjit Singh, mandating that tables and chairs be removed from temple dining halls. Singh subsequently ordered the excommunication of six prominent moderates at Ross Street for speaking out against his edict. Although Singh had been a favorite of hard-liners, critics note he was convicted of murdering a rival in 1980, though he was pardoned in India. A lawsuit filed by moderates of the Ross Street congregation forced new leadership elections, and a moderate slate of candidates won, but not before more violence. In November, Tara Singh Hayer, publisher of a community newspaper highly critical of the hard-liners and one of the group excommunicated from Ross Street, was shot and killed.
Authorities believe the shooting, still under investigation, was related to the power struggle.
Two months before Hayer's death, a man in Broward County, Fla., who had vigorously objected to allowing tables and chairs in temples opened fire in a local temple, killing one person. The conflict cuts to the core of Sikh identity and religious authority, says Ken Bryant, a Sikh expert at the University of British Columbia. In 1984, Sikhs were galvanized by anger over the Indian army's storming of the Golden Temple to flush out militants. Prime Minister Indira Gandhi's assassination at the hands of her Sikh bodyguards was followed by anti-Sikh pogroms. An armed struggle to establish an independent Sikh nation, to be known as Khalistan, took an estimated 17,000 lives before it was brutally suppressed in the early 1990s.