Sothebys and the Sikh armour: protest brings result

The London auction house Sotheby's has - following protests in India - withdrawn from sale a set of magnificent body armour which once belonged, it seems, to Guru Gobind Singh, the tenth and last religious leader of the Sikhs.  It should, say believers, be housed at the Golden Temple in Amritsar.

The sale of religious artefacts has long been contentious. In the fourth century St Augustine denounced profiteers who roamed the land dressed as monks selling spurious relics.

In 1991 Mali attempted to prevent Sotheby's auctioning a religious statue of a ram in their sale of African art. The sale went ahead and the ram fetched $275,000. There have since been claims that the statue was in fact a fake.

More recently the International Crusade for Holy Relics has begun waging a war against the sale of religious artefacts on eBay.