On Sunday morning, masked and hooded religious fanatics entered a holy site in Leamington Spa, disrupted an event they deemed taboo, and found themselves negotiating with armed police. One of the intruders videoed the event, and could be heard declaring, “Leamington is finished. Finished. We got our [kids] saying its ok to marry white people, black people … it's a mess”.

These were not Isis-inspired Islamist terrorists, but Sikhs. The target was an inter-faith marriage, though the cameraman’s language leaves little doubt as to the racial edge to this religious hostility.

Sikh groups, including the national Sikh Federation, have defended their actions as a form of peaceful protest. But the intolerance and intimidation on display is part of a disturbing pattern of behavior by religious conservatives, seeking to coerce others – often their co-religionists – into complying with their own bigoted, narrow-minded beliefs. Such efforts feed into toxic identity politics, with notions of caste, sect, and race mixed up with what seem to be matters of theology.