Anandpur is a small Indian town nestling in the foothills of the Himalayas on the eastern fringes of the state of Panjab. Dominating the town is an elegant gurdwara, the second most important Sikh religious site after the Golden Temple complex at Amritsar. Here in the month of Vaisakhi, 1699, Gobind Rai the tenth guru, founded the Khalsa, the Sikh ‘community of the pure’. Not for the first time the Sikhs were facing a crisis. The story goes that Gobind called a great meeting. Depictions of the event show him standing before a vast crowd, gesturing with a drawn sword. He challenges the crowd to give their lives in sacrifice. One man volunteers and is taken behind a curtain. A moment of silence, a sudden swish, a dull thud. The guru comes out, the sword dripping with blood, and demands another sacrifice. Five times the challenge is repeated, until finally Gobind draws back the curtain and there stand the five men, alive and well. The story is eerily reminiscent of God’s command to Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac on the mountain of Moriah (Gen. 22:1–18) and is usually interpreted as a test of loyalty and courage. How free are Gobind’s would-be followers to give everything for the cause they believe in?

Whatever actually transpired that day has resonated through the Sikh community ever since. Gobind Singh – the lion, as he then styled himself – decreed that the leadership of this new community should henceforth be vested not in any human guru but in the Holy Book, the Guru Granth Sahib, the collection of hymns that can be traced back to the teachings of the first guru, Nanak – and, indeed, beyond, for Sikhs proudly include the hymns of other sants, Hindu and Muslim holy men, in the Granth. Why Gobind Singh made this move is unclear. Possibly he wanted to avoid the weakness inherent in the dynastic style of leadership that bedevilled similar sant communities. More likely, as Harjot Oberoi puts it, he wanted to ‘end the ambiguities of Sikh identity’. It was, however, the work of a religious genius, transforming what began as a development within the bhakti traditions of northern India into a coherent, organised community that was prepared to fight and face death to defend its interests. Prominently displayed in the gurdwara in Anandpur is a collection of gleaming steel weapons. On the wall opposite are inscribed the names of the first five men to answer Gobind’s call to arms, the panj piare, or ‘five dear ones’. According to tradition they came from five different cities and five different castes, the first and most powerful witness to the Sikh belief that God’s love is there for all people and no distinctions are to be made between individuals on grounds of age, gender, caste or religion. All are equal in the sight of God. With the institution of the Khalsa, the two dimensions of Sikh tradition, the spiritual and the temporal, are harmonised in the ideal figure of the soldier-saint, totally dedicated to the love of God and the welfare of humanity. On that first Vaisakhi day Guru Gobind declared: ‘I am the son of the immortal God. It is by his order that I have been born and have established this form of initiation. They who accept it shall henceforth be known as the Khalsa. The Khalsa is the Guru and the Guru is the Khalsa. There is no difference between you and me.’ When he died in 1708 the guruship was held to lie with God alone.