McDonald's first all-veg outlet will be near Golden Temple

New Delhi: US fast-food giant McDonald's, famed for its beef-based Big Mac burgers, on Tuesday said it will open its first vegetarian-only restaurant anywhere in the world in India next year.

The world's second-biggest restaurant chain after Subway tailors its menus to suit local tastes, which in India means no beef to avoid offending Hindus and no pork to cater for Muslim requirements.

The first vegetarian outlet will open its doors mid-next year near the Golden Temple in the Sikh holy city of Amritsar in northern India where religious authorities forbid consumption of meat at the shrine.

"It will be the first time we have opened a vegetarian restaurant," a spokesman for McDonald's in northern India, Rajesh Kumar Maini, told AFP. "There is a big opportunity for vegetarian restaurants (in India) as many Indians are vegetarian."

After the opening in Amritsar, the US chain has plans to open another vegetarian outlet near the Vaishno Devi cave shrine in northwestern Indian Kashmir - a revered Hindu pilgrimage site that draws hundreds of thousands of worshippers year.

McDonald's in India has a menu that is 50-percent vegetarian. Its McAloo Tikki burger - which uses a spiced potato-based patty - is the top seller, accounting for a quarter of total sales.

Among the chicken-only meat offerings, the Maharaja Mac is also a favourite.

"At the moment, India is still a very small market - we just have 271 restaurants in India and across the world we have nearly 33,000," Maini said.

"But when you look at the potential of the country, it is one of the top priority countries and we are laying the groundwork for capturing the market." Hindus, who account for 80 percent of India's 1.2 billion population, regard cows as sacred. For Muslims, the consumption of pork is prohibited in the Quran.

Iran's connection to India's Sikhs

Tehran: It could simply be lore now, but if the story Jugal Kishore, the principal of Tehran's new Kendriya Vidyalaya told us is true, Iran's province of Zahedan was named for the Sikh gentlemen, called Zaheds- the pious- by the Shah at the time.

It was called Dozdab before being rechristened. Dozd for bandit, Ab for water. So in Persian it literally meant -a town of bandits by the water. When the Shah visited, he found Sikh gentlemen in white robes, and flowing beards and asked what they were doing among the thieves. And that's how Zahedan got its name.

Zahedan was also the place where Narender Kaur Sahni was born, 74 years ago. Her parents had arrived from the Punjab in their youth, beckoned by the promise of a better life in the transport business. For the Sikhs, Iran is sacred ground, in their "Taqdeer" as the priest in the local Gurudwara says, while addressing the sangat and its special guest, Mrs Gursharan Kaur.  They believe that Guru Nanak crossed through Afghanistan, Iran, and Iraq on his way to Mecca, and that's why Sikh populations, dwindling as they may be, go back centuries.

Things were good in her youth, Narender Kaur tells us. "Shah agar khaata tha, khilaata bhi tha" If the Shah ate himself, he made sure we got food on our table as well. When her parents arranged her marriage to Santok Singh Saini, 55 years ago, she could never have imagined considering any place other than Iran home. With runaway inflation, a devaluation of the Iranian Riyal and an Islamic code of conduct in place they've had to adapt to extremely trying circumstances.

Although their religious freedom wasn't curbed by the Islamic Republic, things changed after the revolution. Restrictions on women- their clothes and movement, the difficulty in owning property or getting business licenses meant that several of Tehran's nearly 3500 strong Sikh community began to leave. Today their numbers have fallen to about 50 or 60 families, and they still make up the bulk of the Indian diaspora in Iran.

Narender Kaur's is one of them.

Her husband has a small business, but her three children have long left the country for greener pastures. One is in England, the others in America. They are unlikely to come back. As much as it breaks her heart to leave the only home she has ever known, she and her husband are considering moving to one of them. For women like her the empty nest syndrome takes on an added heaviness in the current social and economic environment.

For younger families, who still have strong business ties here, many have made their peace with the changing situation. Their children go to the school Jugal Kishore runs. He tells us, the Sikh community approached the Indian government after the Islamic revolution in 1979 to help run the school, as the community that had started and paid for its upkeep and resources was beginning to leave. He came here 6 years ago from Punjab, on a posting from Kendriya Vidyalaya, and says he's had no trouble adapting to a country that's looked upon with apprehension at best by the rest of the world.

During this visit to Tehran, as the Prime minister met with representatives of the Indian community, his wife, Mrs Gursharan Kaur gave grants of 2 crore rupees for the upkeep of the school and 20 lakh rupees to the Gurudwara for its running. Beaming children and their parents, weathered old faces like those of Narender Kaur and her husband Santok who've seen it all, were out in all their glory to receive the first Indian leader to visit Iran. The small community, many of whom continue to be Indian citizens continues to looks towards Delhi to safeguard its interests in a country where their own stories are but a reflection of a greater crisis for everyone who calls Iran home.

From: NDTV

Sikh man beaten up in US, arrested for keeping Kirpan

Washington: An elderly Sikh man, in his early 70s, was allegedly beaten up by his neighbour in New Jersey following an altercation and was later arrested by the police because of keeping 'Kirpan', a Sikh article of faith.

The incident happened on July 26, nearly 10 days before the shooting at Oak Creek Gurdwara in Wisconsin, United Sikhs, a Sikh advocacy group said yesterday.

Giving details of the incident, the group said that Avtar Singh, a gas station owner and one of the founding members of Glen Rock Gurdwara in New Jersey, went to his neighbouring shop owned by Edward Koscovski to request him to move his truck that was parked and blocking the entrance of his gas station.

The request turned into an altercation in which Avtar Singh was brutally assaulted, it said.

"I kept on yelling that please let me go but nothing moved Edward from hitting me. When I turned around using all my strength, Edward smashed my face, broke my teeth and kept punching me in the stomach. He grabbed my Kirpan and threw it at his attendant."

"The attendant removed the Kirpan from the mian (cover) and hid the mian (cover) in a room inside. He also snatched my phone and put it out of sight," Avtar Singh said.

Upon arrival at the scene, the police arrested the 72-year-old Avtar Singh and charged him with possession of a weapon (Kirpan), United Sikhs said.

He was interrogated before anyone attended to his injuries and then taken to the hospital and was handcuffed to the hospital bed during his stay at the hospital. Mr Singh was then taken to the police station and jailed till his family members filed his bail application, it said.

United Sikhs said that it contacted the Civil Rights Division and the Community Relations Service Division in the US Department of Justice, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), as well as the State of New Jersey Attorney General's office for investigation and is following up on Avtar Singh's case to be heard next Thursday.

From: NDTV

12 days after Gurdwara shooting, another Sikh kiled in Wisconsin

Barely 12 days after the shooting at a Gurdwara that killed six worshippers, an elderly Sikh man has been shot dead in an attempted robbery incident in the same Wisconsin state.
A manhunt has been launched to nab the assailant, police said. The death of another Sikh has sent shock waves among the Sikh community members in Washington, even though the police have termed it as a robbery incident and ruled out any link to the August 5 shootout inside the Oak Creek Gurdwara that killed six Sikh worshippers.

The deceased Dalbir Singh, 56, assisted his nephew Jatinder Singh in running a grocery store in Milwaukee city, Wisconsin.

The incident happened Wednesday night when some unidentified men entered the shop and put a gun to Jatinder Singh head.

Jatinder Singh said he and his uncle made it back into the store and pushed the side door shut, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported.

But one of the men fired a shot through the door, killing Dalbir Singh, it said.

Dalbir Singh was a regular visitor to the Gurdwara in Oak Creek, but was not present when the tragic incident happened on August 5.

Jatinder Singh had gone to the Gurdwara, but had left its premises before the shootout began.