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The Khalsa

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Origin 1699

Also called the Khalsa Panth, and rendered in English as the Order of the Pure. The order of initiated Sikhs, founded by Guru Gobind Singh at Anandpur at Vaisakhi in 1699. Khalsa means the pure, and also, in the revenue usage of the period, land held directly of the sovereign rather than through an intermediary, a sense the founding deliberately invokes, since the Khalsa belongs to the Guru directly and to no one in between.

Its members are initiated by amrit, wear the five articles of faith, keep the daily Nitnem, and abstain from the four grave breaches. Men take the name Singh, lion, and women Kaur, princess, which removed at a stroke the family names by which caste was read.

What was created was a body that was simultaneously a religious order, a community and an army, and the tradition does not separate those. It gave institutional form to miri and piri, and it was founded under military pressure in a period when the Sikh community was being killed for existing.

Its constitution is unusual and was designed to be. Guru Gobind Singh initiated the first five and then asked them to initiate him, placing himself under the order he had made; the authority of the Khalsa therefore rests in the body of initiated Sikhs rather than in any person, and any five acting as the Panj Pyare carry it. Nine years later he ended the human guruship altogether. The formula in which the Khalsa understands itself, that the Khalsa belongs to the timeless one and the victory belongs to the timeless one, is a denial that it belongs to anyone at all.

Not every Sikh is of the Khalsa, and Sikh teaching does not hold that initiation is required for liberation, which comes through the Name. The relation between the initiated order and the wider community of Sikhs has been the tradition's most persistent internal question, and the categories Amritdhari, Keshdhari, Sahajdhari and Patit are the vocabulary in which it is argued.

Facts
Organisation
Category of Structure
Community 1
Who May Belong
Initiates only 2
Sourced to the subject's own accountEntered by taking amrit, which is open to women and men alike
Origins
Origin Period
1699 1
Status
Status Today
Living tradition, practised today 1
Learn More
The Order Founded So That the Last Guru Was a Book and a People

The Khalsa is the order of initiated Sikhs founded by Guru Gobind Singh at Anandpur in 1699, and its creation reshaped the community from a following gathered around a living teacher into a self-governing body.

The founding at Vaisakhi

At the spring festival of 1699 the Guru called for those willing to give their heads, initiated the five who came forward without regard to their caste, and then had them initiate him in turn, so that the initiator and the initiated were made equal. The initiated took the name Singh, the women Kaur, undertook to keep the five articles of faith and a code of conduct, and were bound into a single disciplined order. The reversal by which the Guru received initiation from his own disciples is the founding statement of the order self-understanding.

A Guru that does not die

The Khalsa matters because of what it made possible when the line of human Gurus ended. Guru Gobind Singh declared that after him the Guruship would rest in the scripture, the Guru Granth Sahib, and in the community of the initiated, the Guru Panth, so that authority passed to a book and a people rather than to a successor. The Khalsa is therefore not one institution among others but the vessel into which the living authority of the Gurus was transferred, and its collective decisions carry the weight the tradition once gave to the Guru in person.

Founded So the Next Guru Would Be a Book

The Khalsa was founded at a specific moment rather than growing gradually: at Vaisakhi in 1699, at Anandpur, Guru Gobind Singh called for volunteers willing to give their lives, tested five men who came forward, the Panj Pyare or five beloved ones, and initiated them and then himself into a new order marked by five physical signs, the five Ks, that made initiated Sikhs visibly identifiable to each other and to anyone else.

The founding solved a problem the community faced repeatedly across the lifetimes of the Gurus, disputed claims to succession and authority by rival family members and pretenders, by building a corporate identity that did not depend on any one leader's person. That design became explicit at the end of Guru Gobind Singh's own life: before his death in 1708 he declared that there would be no further living Guru, and that the scripture, the Guru Granth Sahib, would thereafter be regarded as the eternal Guru, with the Khalsa Panth itself carrying forward the Gurus' continuing authority in the world. The order that had been founded to give the community a collective backbone during the Gurus' lifetimes became, by that declaration, the institution meant to carry Sikh authority forward permanently once no individual Guru would ever hold it again.

Cross-Tradition Connections

Belongs to Tradition

Sikhism, Religions

Its own record calls it the order of initiated Sikhs.

Source J.S. Grewal, The Sikhs of the Punjab (New Cambridge History of India II.3)J. S. Grewal

Contains

Amritdhari, Religious Roles & Titles

An Amritdhari is an initiated member of the Khalsa.

Source Sikh Rahit Maryada, the Sikh Code of ConductShiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committeethe holders' own account
Panj Pyare, Religious Roles & Titles

The five beloved ones are the form the Khalsa initiation still takes.

Source J.S. Grewal, The Sikhs of the Punjab (New Cambridge History of India II.3)J. S. Grewal

Element Of

Khalsa, Denominations

The order of initiated Sikhs founded at Anandpur in 1699, whose members take amrit, wear the five articles of faith and keep the daily prayers.

Nirmala, Denominations

Nirmala scholars were sent to study Sanskrit and taught within the Panth without belonging to the initiated order, and their establishments were similarly transferred by the reform movement.

Udasi, Denominations

The Udasi order descends from Guru Nanak's elder son and its ascetics do not take amrit or keep the five articles, though Udasi custodians managed many Sikh shrines until the reform movement of the nineteen twenties.

Sources
1. J.S. Grewal, The Sikhs of the Punjab (New Cambridge History of India II.3)
J. S. Grewal, Cambridge University Press, 1998on the founding of the KhalsaView the Source
1. J.S. Grewal, The Sikhs of the Punjab (New Cambridge History of India II.3)
J. S. Grewal, Cambridge University Press, 1998On the founding of the Khalsa in 1699View the Source
2. Sikh Rahit Maryada, the Sikh Code of Conduct
Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee, Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee, 1945On membership of the Khalsathe holders' own accountView the Source
The Encyclopaedia of Sikhism
Harbans Singh (editor-in-chief), Punjabi University, Patiala, 1998on the Khalsa and the Guru PanthView the Source
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