The Panj Piare are the most quietly radical thing in Sikh history. Of the five who volunteered their heads at Anandpur in 1699, one was a khatri shopkeeper, one a jat farmer, and three were from castes ranked low — a water-carrier, a calico-printer and a barber — and they came from Lahore, Delhi, Jagannath Puri, Dwarka and Bidar. They ate from one bowl, took one surname, and were then asked by Guru Gobind Singh to initiate him, which inverted the relationship the whole subcontinent ran on. Five Sikhs standing in their name still administer amrit, still lead processions, and still hold the authority to summon and discipline anyone in the Panth including its most powerful politicians. The distance between that constitutional fact and the caste-segregated gurdwaras of rural Punjab is the tradition's most uncomfortable measurement of itself.