Initiation into the Khalsa

Many Sikhs affirm initiation into the Khalsa, the order founded by Guru Gobind Singh in 1699, through the ceremony of Amrit Sanchar, in which initiates drink sweetened water (amrit) stirred with a double-edged sword to the recitation of sacred verses. The initiated Sikh takes on the discipline of the Rahit and the five articles of faith (the Five Ks): uncut hair (kesh), a comb (kangha), a steel bracelet (kara), a sword (kirpan), and a particular undergarment (kachera). Men take the name Singh and women Kaur.

The Khalsa was founded at Anandpur Sahib on Vaisakhi day, 1699, when Guru Gobind Singh, according to Sikh tradition, called for volunteers willing to give their heads; five men who stepped forward, the Panj Pyare ("Five Beloved Ones"), became the first initiates and administered amrit to one another. In a step Sikh tradition treats as spiritually significant, Guru Gobind Singh then asked the Panj Pyare to initiate him in turn, so that the Guru received amrit from the very disciples he had just initiated, an act read as symbolising the merging of Guru and Khalsa into a single collective spiritual authority that would, after the tenth Guru's death, pass to the scripture (Guru Granth Sahib) and the corporate community (Guru Panth) rather than to any further individual leader.

Initiation binds the Sikh to the code of conduct (including the cardinal prohibitions against cutting the hair, tobacco, kutha meat, and adultery), and to the ideal of the saint-soldier who unites devotion with courage and service. The Khalsa was created to give the community a visible, committed identity, and its initiation remains the fullest form of Sikh commitment, distinguishing the amritdhari (initiated) Sikh. The affirmation is central to Khalsa identity, though not every Sikh has undergone the rite, and it expresses the tradition's fusion of inner devotion with outward discipline and readiness to defend the faith.

Not every Sikh undergoes Khalsa initiation: Sahajdhari Sikhs follow the Guru's teaching and revere the Guru Granth Sahib without adopting the Five Ks or maintaining uncut hair, a distinction that has produced real institutional disputes over Sikh identity, including recurring controversy over whether Sahajdharis should be entitled to vote in elections for the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee, the body that governs major Sikh gurdwaras in Punjab; legislation has moved back and forth on the question, reflecting an unresolved tension between a more inclusive definition of Sikh identity centred on belief and a stricter one centred on the visible, initiated markers of the Khalsa.