The specific code of conduct an amritdhari undertakes to keep, the Sikh Rehat Maryada, was not fixed in its present standardised form until 1945, when the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee promulgated it after decades of consultation, aiming to settle considerable local and sectarian variation in how initiated Sikhs across different regions and reform movements had been defining the discipline; before that codification, what counted as full observance varied more by region, lineage and reform movement, including the Singh Sabha reform movement of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, than a single uniform standard would suggest.
Sociological and religious surveys of Sikh communities consistently find that amritdhari Sikhs, those who have actually taken the formal initiation, are a minority among people who identify as Sikh worldwide, with keshdhari and less formally observant Sikhs together far outnumbering the fully initiated at any given time, a gap the tradition itself has always acknowledged through its own vocabulary of graded commitment rather than treating initiation as a universal expectation every Sikh is assumed to have met.
Large diaspora gatherings, particularly Vaisakhi celebrations organised by major gurdwaras in the United Kingdom, Canada and the United States, now regularly include a public Amrit Sanchar ceremony offered to any prepared candidate present, a practice that has made initiation available at a specific scheduled public occasion in a way smaller or more remote communities historically could not offer, since a properly constituted ceremony requires five amritdhari Sikhs able to serve as the Panj Pyare for it, a quorum a large diaspora gurdwara can assemble far more easily than a small or newly established congregation.