How to Live
the ethic — what it asks of a life
The four kurahits.
Cutting the hair, eating kutha meat, adultery, and tobacco or intoxicants — the four cardinal breaches that void the amrit vow outright. Everything else in the rehat is a fault to be corrected; these four send you back to the Panj Piare to be initiated again.
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The Five Ks.
Uncut hair, comb, steel bracelet, soldier's shorts, sword — identity worn on the body.
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Sarbat da bhala — the good of all.
The Ardas does not end with a request for Sikhs. It ends by asking for the welfare of everyone alive, which is why Sikh langar turns up at earthquake sites, refugee crossings and farmers' blockades without a religious test at the door.
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Seva — selfless service.
Work done for others without wage or credit — the kitchen, the shoes, the floor.
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Caste has no standing here.
One surname, one row on the floor, one bowl of amrit, and a marriage rite that involves no astrologer. It is the tradition's founding social claim, and the gap between it and rural Punjab is the thing Sikh reformers are angriest about.
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The three pillars.
Naam japo, kirat karo, vand chhako — remember the Name, earn honestly, share what you earn. The whole ethic in three imperatives a farmer can keep.
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Daswandh — the tenth.
A tenth of income to the community, given directly and without assessment, on the reasoning that what you keep was never entirely yours. Guru Amar Das built it into the manji system in the sixteenth century; there has never been a tithe collector.
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Dharam yudh — the war with conditions on it.
No revenge, no plunder, no forced conversion, no harm to those not fighting, the sword put down when the injustice ends — and the whole thing licensed only when every other means has been exhausted. The Khalsa is meant to be able to defend anybody, which is precisely why the ninth Guru died for Brahmins.
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No idols, no omens, no auspicious days.
The Rehat Maryada names what a Sikh does not do: worship images, keep fasts for merit, consult astrologers, believe in omens, observe ritual pollution, or treat any pilgrimage as buying anything. Punjabi practice runs a lively trade in all six, and this is the standing complaint of every reform movement since 1873.
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What was written down about women.
Guru Amar Das forbade sati and the veil and permitted widow remarriage in the 1550s; the Rehat Maryada bans dowry, bars association with those who kill infant daughters, and says explicitly that any Sikh may perform any service. The rules are unusually clear for their date, and the institutions have been slower than the rules by about four centuries.
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