North America's oldest Sikh temple society needs to modernize century-old traditions before more youth are lost to gang violence, says a spokesman for a group that has sued the society over its membership process.

Jatinder Singh of Sikh Youth Vancouver said Friday that the Khalsa Diwan Society is stuck in old-school thinking that's keeping young people out of its temple.

Singh, 42, said parents and grandparents of young Sikhs also want the temple, called the Ross Street Gurdwara, to change with the times.

"They want modernization," he said.

"They're tired of their children no longer knowing the Punjabi language, they're tired of their grandchildren falling into cycles of violence and gangs and drugs. And they're tired of their children and grandchildren being disengaged from Canadian society and the Sikh community."

Singh said his group has unsuccessfully tried to meet with the society to suggest outreach programs and an Internet site to engage young people.

"I don't think we're advocating that they should have their religious services by Twitter," he said.

"We're just talking about how do we engage an entirely disconnected era of people," he said. "When you lack a sense of community, you lack a sense of responsibility and when you lack that you become engaged in things that are tainting our community."

Kesar Bhatti, the society's senior vice-president, said earlier this week that Singh's group consists of so-called fundamentalists who are only interested in controlling the temple now run by moderates.

But Singh, who said he began attending the temple as a child in 1973 and recently returned there, called Bhatti's assertions "nonsense," saying such labels have nothing to do with his concerns.

"We are, in a word, modernists, and they're traditionalists," he said.

Sikh Youth Vancouver recently filed a lawsuit against the society after questioning the transparency of its membership process.

Singh said both sides have now complied with a B.C. Supreme Court judge's order to agree on a third-party administrator who would oversee memberships before an election at the temple.

Last week, a judge invalidated the memberships of thousands of people, saying the process was flawed.

But Bhatti, 79, said a count of 5,000 membership cards showed that five of them were not signed and about 30 were duplicates, although that error would have later been picked up.

The election, held every three years, was scheduled for Nov. 6, but has now been put into limbo before Justice Paul Walker approves the administrator and a new membership procedure is finalized.

Singh said his group is "very aggressively" trying to recruit members for the next election, after the legal issues have been settled.

"We've knocked on hundreds of doors over the last few months," he said, adding the group is using social networking sites to draw people.

"The membership drive is purely the mechanism by which we're looking to bring a progressive, next-generation, modern leadership to the institution," Singh said.

For example, he said his group proposed online membership applications but the society wasn't interested, even after an offer to pay for someone to make that happen.

"It doesn't make sense that in almost 2011 to have an institution of this size, with the largest Sikh temple society outside of India, to be unable to communicate with you by email."

He said anyone can watch online services and events held at the Golden Temple, Sikh's holiest shrine, in India.

"We're talking about a developing nation with sporadic Internet connections and electricity that you have approximately one third of the day."