One person was killed and dozens were injured in this riot

The impersonation portrayed in a newspaper ad has sparked riots where one person was killed and more than 50 were injured after tens of thousands of angry Sikhs, many armed with their ceremonial kirpan daggers, went on the rampage across Punjab and the neighbouring state of Haryana.

It has also triggered angry meetings in Sikh communities around the world while groups fighting for a separate Sikh state called Khalistan are using the protests to agitate against the Indian government.

In Sikhism’s holy city of Amritsar, where politics and religion share a common platform, the Akal Takht which is the religion’s highest temporal seat, has rejected the apology from Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh, the leader of the Dera Sacha Sauda.

It wants all institutions, temples and campuses linked to the Dera Sacha Sauda closed down by May 31 or risk further calls of action by the Sikh leadership.

The Akal Takht is also calling for the arrest of the sect leader, who has already been charged by police for offending religious sentiments.

Other hardline Sikh groups are using the unrest in Punjab, which has forced the federal government to rush thousands of soldiers to the region, to close all other institutions considered Sikh breakaway sects. Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh, who has tens of thousands of followers around the world, drives around in a Mercedes Benz with 25 bodyguards, has refused to shutdown his operations. The rioting broke out after the Dera Sacha Sauda sect, a non-profit group that combines social work with spirituality, placed an advert in a local newspaper showing its leader, Gurmeet Singh, allegedly impersonating Sikhism’s 10th and last guru, an act most Sikhs would consider deeply offensive.

The advert appeared to show Gurmeet Singh administering a special nectar, known as Jaam-e-Insaan, to his followers while wearing the same long robes worn by the guru, Guru Gobind Singh - who was also known to baptise believers with nectar.

Unlike Islam, where picturing the Prophet Mohamed is strictly forbidden, most Sikhs believe it is permissible to picture their gurus, and families often place a picture of the religion’s founding father, Guru Nanak Dev, somewhere in their homes.

But pretending to be a guru is strictly forbidden.

“Impersonating a Sikh guru always runs the risk of outraging even the most moderate of sikhs,” sais Jagtar Singh of the Sikh Federation’s UK branch. “Even if our schoolchildren were putting on a play about the gurus, we would never get anyone to actually play the role of one,” he told The Independent.

“Most Sikh groups believe Guru Gobind Singh was the final guru. Some people have since claimed themselves to be living gurus, something which is deeply offensive to most Sikhs.”

In B.C., Sikhs gathered at the Gurdwara Sahib Sukh Sagar on Wood Street in New Westminster, to discuss the conflict and “attack against the Sikh community”.

Local organizers said Gurmeet Singh has been ridiculing the Sikh community, modelling himself as a self-proclaimed Guru of the new age and trying to duplicate other Sikh practices in order to gain followers.

The organizers invited other local community and religious groups to attend the meeting.

In Greater Vancouver and Toronto, callers to Punjabi-language radio stations have also been expressing their outrage.

For his part, Gurmeet Singh insists he has done nothing wrong and has refused to apologise for the advert. “I wear whatever my followers give me to wear,” he told the New Indian Express from his sect’s headquarters in Sirsa, Haryana.

“My robes can match anybody’s. They don’t indicate my inclination towards any particular religion. All religions are the same.”

The Central Bureau of Intelligence, India’s equivalent to the FBI, also says Gurmeet Singh is a prime suspect in the murder of an Indian journalist who accused the sect of brainwashing women and sexually assaulting them in 2002. Many say the rapid response of India’s government to the crisis shows their fears that the riots have transformed into a wider protest against what many Sikhs say is the way they are discriminated against by the government.

“The recent protests really have mushroomed into something much bigger,” says Jagtar Singh, whose organisation campaigns for the creation of a Sikh homeland called Khalistan.

“There have already been incidents where protesters have been chanting the word ‘Khalistan’. The feeling is that now is a good time to protest against the government over Sikh human rights. As long as it remains a political agitation for Sikh rights, we support that. When there is violence, we’ll condemn it.”

Set up in Sirsa in April 1948, the Dera Sacha Sauda welcomed people from all walks of life without any discrimination based on caste, culture or religion.  Possessing nearly 700-acre land in Sirsa, the group has agricultural land, a revolving restaurant, biscuit factory, supermarket and an ice plant. The dera also runs a charitable co-educational school, a 175-bed hospital and holds relief camps during natural calamities.

Some estimates number the group’s followers at about 1.7 million people in India, the USA, Canada, Italy, Middle East, New Zealand and UK among other countries.

Gurmeet Singh, who spends much of his time living in a cave on his ashram, has always been a controversial figure. In 2002, his sect was accused of brainwashing and sexually assaulting female followers. Gurmeet Singh, who prefers his acolytes to call him by his somewhat laborious full title Huzoor Maharaj Sant Gurmeet Ram Raheem Singh Ji, is currently being investigated by police over rape and murder allegations.

He recently clashed with the Punjab’s state government after urging followers to vote for the Congress party, which forms the opposition there. But supporters say his message that all religions are equal attracts hundreds of thousands of genuine followers from low-caste Hindu families as well as from the region’s Christian and Sikh communities.