Police fired a 21-gun salute on Friday and 70,000 mourners crowded round the funeral pyre of Gurcharan Singh Tohra, the head of Sikhism's highest administrative body, a day after he died of a heart attack.
Tohra's body was wrapped in an Indian flag and covered with hundreds of wreaths as he was cremated with full state honors in his ancestral village, Tohra, 260 kilometers (160 miles) northeast of New Delhi.
Tohra, who died at the age of 79, was president of the Sikh Gurudwara Prabandhak Committee, which administers Sikh religious and cultural institutions worldwide. He held the post 26 times since 1960.
The Sikh religion was founded in India's Punjab region, where Sikhs are a majority and heavily influence politics.
Tohra's mourners included India's vice president, Bhairon Singh Shekhawat, Indian Law Minister Arun Jaitley and most of Punjab state's politicians, led by the chief minister, Amarinder Singh.
After the priests said the prayers, Tohra's son-in-law, Harmail Singh Tohra, lit the pyre.
Tohra's successor will be chosen after the last funeral ceremony, which is held 11 days after cremation.
Tohra had spent years feuding with Prakash Singh Badal _ his colleague in Punjab state's main opposition Akali Dal party. The fighting split the party before the two leaders resolved their differences in recent years.
"We have lost a diamond of the Sikh community," Badal said during the funeral. "We have to follow the principles of Gurcharan Singh Tohra. The Sikh community should never forget what he has done for our development."
In the 1980s, the Akali Dal supported the demands of armed Sikh militants that Punjab _ home to most of the world's 20 million Sikhs _ should secede from India. Terrorist attacks and fighting between Indian security forces and the guerrillas in the decade-long campaign for a Sikh homeland left more than 15,000 people dead. The uprising was crushed by 1994.
The Akali Dal changed its stance in the 1990s, supporting greater federalism within the Indian union, and became a close ally of Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee's Bharatiya Janata Party.