ਸਿੱਖ ਰਹਿਤ ਮਰਯਾਦਾਸਿੱਖ ਰਹਿਤ ਮਰਯਾਦਾ

The Sikh Rehat Maryada is the Sikh code of conduct: the one Panth-approved guide to how a Sikh lives, worships and serves, and how gurdwaras and Sikh ceremonies are run. Drawn from centuries of Sikh practice and the older rehatnama texts, it was drafted by a Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC) subcommittee from 1927, ratified in 1936, and published in its final form at Amritsar in 1945.

What is the Sikh Rehat Maryada?

Rehat means a mode of living, from the Punjabi rahina, to live or remain, and Maryada means an accepted rule, custom or bound of conduct, so the title itself says what the document is: the Sikh way of life, written down. The code opens with a definition of a Sikh: a person who faithfully believes in the One Eternal God, accepts the ten Gurus and Guru Granth Sahib Ji as their spiritual guides, and believes in the Amrit Sanchar instituted by the tenth Guru. From that definition it moves through personal discipline, family and community life, gurdwara services, and the conduct of ceremonies, so that a Sikh in Amritsar and a Sikh in Toronto are following the same maryada in the same words.

Where did the Rehat come from?

The Maryada of 1945 was the end of a long written tradition, not its beginning. From the time of Guru Gobind Singh Ji, Sikhs recorded the Guru's discipline in texts called rehatnamas, manuals of conduct attributed to Sikhs close to the Guru such as Bhai Nand Lal, Bhai Daya Singh Ji, Bhai Chaupa Singh, Bhai Desa Singh and Bhai Prahlad Singh, alongside the tradition of the Guru's 52 Hukams, his standing instructions to the Khalsa. These manuals agreed on the core of the discipline, the ਪੰਜ ਕਕਾਰ, the ban on cutting the hair, on tobacco and on kutha meat, but they differed in detail, and over the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries other customs crept into some of them. By the Singh Sabha reform era, scholars such as Bhai Kahn Singh Nabha, who collected and compared the old rehatnamas in the 1890s, were arguing that the Panth needed one settled code drawn from what the manuals held in common.

How was the modern code made, 1927 to 1945?

The machinery came with the Sikh Gurdwaras Act of 1925, which created the SGPC as the elected body administering historic gurdwaras. On 15 March 1927 an SGPC general meeting set up a subcommittee of 29 Sikhs to draft a single code of conduct. A preliminary draft was circulated for comment in April 1931, the subcommittee submitted its report on 1 October 1932, and when a wider conclave of 170 Sikhs at the Akal Takht in December 1933 could not agree, the draft went to a broader body of 50, with comments from 21 Panthic organisations, including some overseas. That body approved the draft on 1 August 1936 and the SGPC general body ratified it on 12 October 1936. After an advisory committee recommended final changes in January 1945, the SGPC accepted them on 3 February 1945, and the Sikh Rehat Maryada was published that year. It has been clarified in small ways since, but never replaced.

What does the code cover?

The code works at three levels. For the individual Sikh it sets the daily rhythm: rising in the early hours, bathing, and reciting the ਨਿਤਨੇਮ banis, Japji Sahib, Jaap Sahib and the Ten Savaiye in the morning, Rehras Sahib in the evening and Kirtan Sohila at night, each followed by ਅਰਦਾਸ; honest work; sharing with others; and meditation on the Name. For the gurdwara it lays down how services run: the sangat is open to everyone, no one is barred by caste, country or religion, shoes are removed and heads covered, nothing tabooed such as tobacco is brought in, and kirtan in the Guru's presence is sung from Gurbani. And for the Panth it covers collective life: the status of the Guru Panth, collective resolutions called Gurmatta, chastisement for breaches of discipline, and appeals. Its ceremony chapters govern Naam Karan (naming a child), ਅਨੰਦ ਕਾਰਜ (marriage), Antam Sanskar (funeral rites) and ਅੰਮ੍ਰਿਤ ਸੰਚਾਰ itself.

Amrit and the four cardinal transgressions

The heart of the code is the discipline an Amritdhari Sikh accepts at initiation, and the code states it most sharply in the sermon the Panj Pyare deliver at every Amrit Sanchar. The initiate keeps all five Ks on the body at all times, recites the daily banis, gives a tenth of earnings in dasvandh, and serves the Panth and the gurdwaras. Four transgressions are named as cardinal, the bajjar kurehtan, and must be avoided absolutely: dishonouring the hair; eating the meat of an animal slaughtered in the Muslim ritual way, kutha meat; cohabiting with a person other than one's spouse; and using tobacco. The code provides that a Sikh who commits one of these must be baptised again, while a transgression committed unintentionally and unknowingly brings no punishment. Lesser breaches are dealt with differently: the Sikh appears before the Panj Pyare, accepts the chastisement, called tankhah, that they assign, often a period of seva, and resolves to be watchful in future.

Is the Rehat Maryada followed everywhere?

The SGPC text is the standard most Sikhs mean when they say Rehat Maryada: it is the code printed at Amritsar, taught in gurdwaras across India and the diaspora, and the reference point for questions from what may be sung in kirtan to how an Anand Karaj is conducted. Its authority is Panthic rather than legal: it binds because the Panth, through the SGPC and the Akal Takht, approved it after eighteen years of consultation, not because any state enforces it, and its own history on the page, 29 drafters, a failed conclave, worldwide comments, is part of why it is trusted. Scholars note that its 1945 approval was not without controversy, and some Sikh orders keep older rehat traditions of their own alongside it. The code's own answer to disagreement is built into its final chapters: collective questions are settled by Gurmatta, a resolution adopted in the presence of Guru Granth Sahib Ji, and local decisions can be appealed, so the Maryada carries its own way of correcting itself.