The short version: the Five Ks are the articles of faith of the initiated Sikh, required by the twentieth-century code and held by Sikh tradition to go back to 1699. The practices behind them are early; the formula of five items all beginning with k is first clearly attested as a list in the nineteenth century (McLeod: 1883); earlier claims are disputed. Whether that matters is one of the most argued questions in Sikh history.[1][2][3] Contested; Political What follows sets out what each source shows, and why the difference between “the Guru prescribed the Five Ks” and “the Guru prescribed the practices that later became the Five Ks” carries so much weight.
The five
Today a Khālsā Sikh keeps five articles, each beginning with k in Punjabi (§5):[4][5] Consensus on current practice.
| Article | What it is |
|---|---|
| Kes | Uncut hair |
| Kaṅghā | A wooden comb |
| Kaṛā | A steel bracelet |
| Kachhahirā | Short breeches |
| Kirpān | A sword |
The Sikh Rahit Maryādā, approved by the Shiromaṇī Gurdwārā Prabandhak Committee in 1945 and published in 1950, requires an initiated Sikh to keep the five kakārs, and forbids four things (kurahits): cutting the hair, eating meat killed in the Muslim manner (kuṭhā), adultery, and the use of tobacco.[4] Consensus on the text.
The rule binds the initiated. An amritdhārī Sikh has taken the Khālsā initiation and keeps the Five Ks; a keshdhārī keeps uncut hair without necessarily having taken amrit; a sahajdhārī follows the Gurus and the scripture but does not keep uncut hair (§11).[6][5] Consensus on the words. Most Sikhs in Punjab and the diaspora are not amritdhārī, and no census counts the proportion. Majority
What the early sources show
Uncut hair and arms are early. Sainapati, a poet at the tenth Guru’s court writing within a few years of his death, already gives the core of the Khālsā’s code: uncut hair, the bearing of arms, avoidance of the hookah, and separation from the masands and the rival lines of Gurus.[7][1] Majority
The other items appear in the eighteenth-century codes. The rahitnāmās, codes of conduct dated by McLeod from 1718–19 to the late eighteenth or early nineteenth century, mention the comb, the breeches and the steel bracelet among other rules about dress and weapons (§6).[1][8] Majority on the dates and contents.
But not as five. The earliest texts do not list five items beginning with k. Some codes speak instead of five weapons, or of other sets of five.[1][9] Majority on what the codes contain.
When the list appears
W. H. McLeod concluded that the formula of the five kakkārs appears only with the Singh Sabhā reformers of the late nineteenth century; the first full list he found is Sumer Singh’s, of 1883. He accepted that all five items may have been worn from early on; what he rejected was that the Guru decreed them as a set.[1][10] Contested
An outsider’s text points the same way. Dayānanda Sarasvatī’s Satyārth Prakāś, in the revised text published in 1884, describes the Five Ks, in a garbled list, as a device of war of no use in the present (§8): evidence that by the early 1880s the five kakārs circulated as a formula.[11][12] Consensus on the text.
The same decades made the Khālsā form the norm. The British army wanted the initiated Singh: recruits enlisted as Sikhs had to keep their hair, and those not already initiated took the pāhul in the regiment.[10][13][14] Majority The Tat Khālsā, the more thoroughgoing reformist wing of the Singh Sabhā, held that the Khālsā was the norm for every Sikh, and its view prevailed over the next thirty years.[10][2] Majority
The other side
Not all scholars accept McLeod’s dating, and the reply is not only from tradition.[2][3]
- Earlier texts. Some cite a Persian couplet attributed to Nand Lāl, a letter of the Guru dated 1699 and an undated text, the Srī Gur Kathā, as evidence for the five; their critics judge them spurious or late, and their dates are disputed. Contested
- The items, not the formula. J. S. Grewal holds that the items were part of Khālsā dress from 1699 and only the formula is late. Contested
- Implicit from the start. Many Sikhs hold that the list was always implicit in the Guru’s commands, whenever it was first written as five. Contested
Put together, the positions are closer than the argument suggests. Nobody disputes that uncut hair and arms go back to the founding, or that the Rahit Maryādā fixes the five today; the dispute is over the decades in between, and over whether a set of practices becomes a different thing when it is given a name. Majority
Why it is political
The question is fought over because it is taken as a test case for the whole history of the Khālsā. If the Five Ks were decreed as a set in 1699, the Khālsā was complete at its founding, as the Sikh tradition and Fundamental Issues hold; if the formula belongs to the 1880s, the Singh Sabhā reformers gave a fixed form to what they presented as a restoration, a reading that fits Harjot Oberoi’s wider argument that they drew a hard line where the boundary had been loose.[3][10] Political It belongs to the larger argument between academic history and community authority that §0 sets out: in 1994 Pashaura Singh was summoned before the Akāl Takht over his thesis on the scripture’s text, and Oberoi’s book drew a campaign against his chair of Sikh studies.[10][15] Majority on the events.
The Five Ks in court
Because they are articles of faith, two of the five have been argued over by courts.
- The kes and the turban. In 1983 the House of Lords held, in Mandla v Dowell Lee, that Sikhs were an ethnic group under the Race Relations Act, and that a school’s rule requiring a Sikh boy to cut his hair and give up his turban was unlawful discrimination.[16] Consensus
- The kirpān. In 2006 the Supreme Court of Canada, in Multani, struck down a school board’s absolute ban on a twelve-year-old’s kirpān, worn sealed in its sheath under his clothes, as an infringement of his freedom of religion.[17] Consensus The judgment treats the kirpān as a religious symbol, not a weapon, on the evidence before it. Consensus
Common misconceptions
- “Every Sikh keeps the Five Ks.” They are required of initiated Sikhs, and most Sikhs are not initiated. Majority
- “The five are listed in the earliest sources.” Uncut hair and arms are; the five k-words are first clearly attested as a list in the nineteenth century (McLeod: 1883); earlier claims are disputed. Contested
- “Historians say the Five Ks are a nineteenth-century invention.” McLeod himself accepted that the items may have been worn from early on; what is late, on his reading, is the formula. Majority
What the evidence cannot settle
Historians can date the codes that mention each article and the first text that lists all five. They cannot recover what the Guru said at Anandpur in 1699, and whether the five were implicit in it is a question the tradition answers in its own terms. Consensus
References
- ^ a b c d e W. H. McLeod Sikhs of the Khalsa: A History of the Khalsa Rahit. Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2003. The code of conduct from the rahitnāmās to the Sikh Rahit Maryādā; the main source for dating the Five Ks.
- ^ a b c J. S. Grewal The Sikhs of the Punjab. The New Cambridge History of India II.3, Cambridge University Press, 1990. The standard narrative history; revised edition 1998.
- ^ a b c Kharak Singh, G. S. Mansukhani and Jasbir Singh Mann, eds. Fundamental Issues in Sikh Studies. Institute of Sikh Studies, Chandigarh, 1992. Essays against McLeod's school, from its Sikh critics.
- ^ a b Sikh Rahit Maryādā — Code of conduct of the Shiromaṇī Gurdwārā Prabandhak Committee. approved 1945 CE; published 1950 CE. Punjabi. The code most Sikh institutions follow: who is a Sikh, the amrit ceremony, the Five Ks and the four cardinal prohibitions. about
- ^ a b Eleanor Nesbitt Sikhism: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press, 2nd ed., 2016.
- ^ W. H. McLeod Who Is a Sikh? The Problem of Sikh Identity. Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1989.
- ^ Sainapati, Srī Gur Sobhā — Poem on Guru Gobind Singh by a poet of his court. early 18th c. CE. Braj in Gurmukhi. The earliest account of the Khālsā's creation, by a poet of Gobind Singh's court: the Guru makes the congregations his own khālsā and removes the masands.
- ^ Chaupā Singh Rahitnāmā — Code of conduct attributed to Chaupā Singh Chhibbar. mid-18th c. CE. Punjabi in Gurmukhi. The longest early rahitnāmā; McLeod dates its core to the 1740s–1760s.
- ^ Doris R. Jakobsh Relocating Gender in Sikh History: Transformation, Meaning and Identity. Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2003.
- ^ a b c d e Harjot Oberoi The Construction of Religious Boundaries: Culture, Identity, and Diversity in the Sikh Tradition. University of Chicago Press, 1994. The "Sanātan" Sikhism of the early nineteenth century and the Singh Sabhā's sharper boundaries.
- ^ Satyārth Prakāś — Dayānanda Sarasvatī. 1875 CE. Hindi. "Back to the Vedas" — reform by declaring image worship, the Purāṇas, avatāras and caste-by-birth all later corruption. about
- ^ Chiranjiva Bharadwaja, trans. Light of Truth: English Translation of Swami Dayananda Saraswati's Satyarth Prakash. First published early 20th c.; repr. New Delhi: Sarvadeshik Arya Pratinidhi Sabha, 1984, 1984. full text English translation of Dayānanda's Satyārth Prakāś; chapter 11 (pp. 443–445 of the reprint) on Nānak and the Sikhs.
- ^ Stephen P. Cohen The Indian Army: Its Contribution to the Development of a Nation. University of California Press, 1971. Includes the army's handling of Sikh religious observance in its regiments.
- ^ Richard G. Fox Lions of the Punjab: Culture in the Making. University of California Press, 1985. Argues that the colonial army and state helped make the Singh the standard Sikh.
- ^ Arvind-pal Singh Mandair Sikhism: A Guide for the Perplexed. Bloomsbury, 2013.
- ^ Mandla v Dowell Lee [1983] 2 AC 548 — House of Lords, [1982] UKHL 7, judgment of 24 March 1983. 24 March 1983. English. Sikhs are an ethnic group under the Race Relations Act 1976, so a school's 'no turban' rule was unlawful indirect discrimination; Lord Fraser's test of a long shared history and a cultural tradition of the group's own. read the text
- ^ Multani v. Commission scolaire Marguerite-Bourgeoys, 2006 SCC 6 — Supreme Court of Canada, [2006] 1 S.C.R. 256, judgment of 2 March 2006. 2 March 2006. English and French. An absolute prohibition on a Sikh pupil's kirpan at school infringed freedom of religion under s. 2(a) of the Charter and was not a minimal impairment; the school board's decision declared a nullity. Para. 76: "Religious tolerance is a very important value of Canadian society." read the text
