NORWICH — Local members of the Sikh community are marking the anniversary of a 1984 mass killing in India and also plan to join other area clergy Thursday for a vigil for the recent mass shooting in an Orlando, Fla., nightclub.

Local Sikhs also plan to join the Norwich Area Clergy Association, the Norwich Branch NAACP, Norwich Human Services and others at a 7 p.m. candlelight vigil Thursday at the David Ruggles Freedom Courtyard in front of City Hall to mark the June 12 Pulse nightclub shootings in Orlando, in which 49 people were killed and 53 others injured by a single gunman. The shootings have been widely condemned as a terrorist act, as well as a hate crime against patrons of the gay club.

Norwichtown Shell owner Swaranjit Singh Khalsa, a leader of the Sikh religious community in Connecticut, said Christ Episcopal Church in Norwich has posted prayers for Sikhs who died during the 1984 Golden Temple massacre on its LED sign on Washington Street, "to show their support for the Sikh community and to give a clear message that freedom is our birthright."

"Sikhs believe in recognizing all of the human race as one and are pro-justice and freedom," he said.

Khalsa said U.S. Rep. Joe Courtney, D-2nd District, drafted and presented a congressional statement recognizing the Freedom March for Sikh Nation on April 9 in Washington, D.C., and that the Sikhs plan to hold a commemoration in November at City Hall to remember the 1984 killings. A similar ceremony was held two years ago.

The 1984 riots and killings of Sikhs in India resulted in a death total of between 2,800 and 8,000, according to various sources.

In June 1984, Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi ordered the Indian Army to attack the Golden Temple, which had been occupied by Sikh separatists who were allegedly stockpiling weapons. The attack is regarded by Sikhs as a desecration of Sikhism's holiest shrine and discrimination against a minority in India.

The subsequent violence in Delhi was triggered by the assassination of Gandhi in October 1984 by two of her Sikh bodyguards in response to her authorizing the military operation.