AMRITSAR, India -- The five head priests of the Sikh religion Sunday excommunicated a maverick warrior chief who recruited thousands of followers to repair the Golden Temple, the sect's holiest shrine.
'Bhai (brother) Santa Singh is being excommunicated from the Sikh order in view of his grave offense,' the priests said.
The priests called on all Sikhs to dissassociate themselves from the repairs being done on the temple, damaged in early June when government troops stormed the 15-acre Golden Temple complex to expel Sikh extremists using it as a base for a terrorist campaign for increased autonomy for Punjab state.
The priests had said the troops must withdraw from the temple before repairs could begin.
The renegade Sikh chief, Baba Santa Singh, for a sixth straight day led volunteers in work on the temple in defiance of the priests.
'They had no right to take such an action,' Singh said.
The punishment did not appear to influence Sikhs backing Singh, who is the chief of the Nihangs, a warrior Sikh group that traditionally serves as temple guards.
The repairs began Tuesday when Singh led about 200 volunteers to the temple. By Sunday, the number of volunteers swelled to 10,000, many of them women and children, as Sikhs from all over Punjab converged on Amritsar, 250 miles northwest of New Delhi. Sikhs are a majority in the northern state.
Although the gold-domed main temple was spared in the assault, many other buildings in the complex sustained heavy damage.
The Sikh head priests charged Singh's repairs were 'government-sponsored service' and accused him of being paid by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.
Mrs. Gandhi has said the army must remain in the shrine to prevent outbreaks of religious violence in the area.
Singh had said earlier he would ignore the high priests because he was superior to them in the Sikh hierarchy and they had no right to issue edicts because their 'seat' was in ruins.
Authorities rounded up 12 people in the sabotage Saturday of a major canal in Punjab by suspected Sikh extremists, officials said.
'This is a great national calamity,' said an irrigation department official who visited the site Sunday.
The saboteurs cut two 800-foot holes in the 144-mile Bhakra canal, flooding farmland and destroying vital irrigation works. Officials estimated the damage at $50 million.
The sabotage came just after troops repaired a 1,600-foot breach made June 5 in a wall upstream from the most recent attack, also blamed on Sikh extremists.
