Georgiansilver made a point that seems relevant to me - "...if I were in India watching it (ie a similar play set in a Christian place of worship)I might feel even more aggrieved." Things that you can shrug off in a country where you are a well established majority feel a bit different when you part of a minority which is subject to various kinds of hostility and attack.

As I understand it the position of the Sikh community leaders was to ask for the play to be amended, so that the action took place in a community centre rather than a Sikh Temple, and that seems a reasonable and prudent suggestion.

In face of the refusal of the people putting it on to do this, they supported peaceful and legal protest. The riot appears, so far as I can see, was as spontaneous as such things always are (which means never wholly spontaneous). It's the kind of thing that has happened before, notably in the history of the Abbey Theatre in Dublin.

It's all resulted in an enormous amount of publicity for the theatre and the people involved in the production. You can't buy media coverage like that...