The five thieves are Indic property, shared with Hindu and Jain moral psychology, but the Sikh accent is on haumai — the sense of being a separate, self-authoring I — as the condition that lets them operate. Guru Arjan calls it a chronic disease that also carries its own cure, which is usually read to mean that the self that suffers is the self that can turn. Nothing is externalised: there is no devil in Sikh cosmology and no fallen realm, so the account of evil is entirely interior and entirely ordinary. Practically, this shapes what Sikh preaching sounds like — less about sin and punishment, more about a person who cannot stop talking about themselves. It also explains why the discipline is repetition of a name rather than confession of a list.