Founding of the Khalsa

In 1699, Guru Gobind Singh, the tenth Guru of the Sikhs, founded the Khalsa at Anandpur in Punjab. The Khalsa was a community of initiated Sikhs bound by a shared discipline, a common identity and a commitment to defend righteousness. It transformed Sikhism from a movement gathered around a line of teachers into a distinct, visibly recognizable panth, or community, whose influence on the history of South Asia proved lasting.

The background lay in the two centuries of Sikh development since Guru Nanak, who taught devotion to one God and rejected caste hierarchy and ritual formalism. Over time the Sikh community grew in size and organization. Its relations with the Mughal state became increasingly strained, and the fifth Guru, Arjan, was executed in 1606 under Emperor Jahangir. The ninth Guru, Tegh Bahadur, was executed in Delhi in 1675 under Aurangzeb. Guru Gobind Singh, his son, inherited a community that had already adopted a more militarized posture, and he also faced tensions with local hill rulers around Anandpur.

According to Sikh tradition, the Guru gathered a large assembly at Anandpur at the time of the spring festival of Vaisakhi. He asked for volunteers willing to give their lives, and five men came forward in turn. They became known as the Panj Pyare, the Five Beloved Ones, and were initiated through a ceremony using sweetened water stirred with a double-edged sword, called amrit. The Guru is said to have then received initiation from them, underscoring the equality of the community. The men were reportedly drawn from different castes and regions, a point central to the Khalsa's egalitarian ideal. Details of the event come largely from later Sikh sources, and historians differ on some specifics, but its central importance is not in doubt.

Initiated Sikhs took the name Singh for men, and Kaur for women, and adopted discipline that came to include the five Ks: uncut hair, a comb, an iron bracelet, a short sword and a particular undergarment. They also pledged to avoid certain practices, such as the use of tobacco. These outward symbols created a shared identity that cut across caste.

The Khalsa shaped Sikh history profoundly. Before his death in 1708, Guru Gobind Singh ended the line of personal Gurus, vesting spiritual authority in the scripture, the Guru Granth Sahib, and temporal guidance in the community. In the following decades Khalsa warriors resisted Mughal and Afghan power, and in the early nineteenth century Maharaja Ranjit Singh built a Sikh-ruled state in Punjab. Today the Khalsa remains central to Sikh religious life, and Vaisakhi is widely celebrated in its memory.