ਵੈਸਾਖਵੈਸਾਖ

Vaisakh (ਵੈਸਾਖ) is the second month of the Punjabi year, running from 14 April to 14 May, with 31 days. It is one of the great months of the Sikh year: on 1 Vaisakh, in 1699, Guru Gobind Singh Ji founded the Khalsa at ਅਨੰਦਪੁਰ ਸਾਹਿਬ, and Vaisakhi remains the biggest festival of the Punjabi spring. In the fields, Vaisakh is the wheat harvest itself, the month the whole rabi season has been building towards.

Vaisakh in the calendar

Vaisakh is month 2 of 12, between ਚੇਤ and ਜੇਠ. Its sangrand, 1 Vaisakh, falls on 14 April every year in the fixed Nanakshahi calendar, and the day is Vaisakhi. The month has 31 days and ends on 14 May. Within the month, on 5 Vaisakh (18 April), falls the parkash of Guru Angad Dev Ji, the second Guru. Vaisakhi has always been a solar festival: even in the old Bikrami reckoning it was a fixed solar celebration, the spring harvest festival of northern India, long before it became the birthday of the Khalsa.

Vaisakh's first day is not Punjab's alone. Sangrand here is Mesha Sankranti, the sun's entry into Aries, and across South and Southeast Asia the same solar turn opens the traditional year around 14 April: Puthandu in Tamil Nadu, Vishu in Kerala, Poila Boishakh in Bengal, Bohag Bihu in Assam and Pana Sankranti in Odisha, with Songkran in Thailand and Thingyan in Myanmar beyond India. Punjab's Vaisakhi is the northern member of this family of solar new year festivals, with a weight of its own, because in Punjab the day also carries the harvest and the founding of the Khalsa.

ਵੈਸਾਖੀ ਅਤੇ ਖਾਲਸੇ ਦੀ ਸਥਾਪਨਾ

On Vaisakhi day in 1699, at ਅਨੰਦਪੁਰ ਸਾਹਿਬ, Guru Gobind Singh Ji called the Sikhs together and founded the Khalsa, the community of the initiated. He asked for volunteers ready to give their heads; five men, remembered as the Panj Pyare, the Five Beloved Ones, stepped forward, and the Guru initiated them with amrit, then took amrit from their hands himself. The Khalsa was given its discipline, its articles of faith and the names Singh and Kaur. Vaisakhi is still kept at Anandpur Sahib and at gurdwaras everywhere with nagar kirtans, amrit sanchar ceremonies and gatherings of the sangat. Our ਵੈਸਾਖੀ page tells the festival's story in full.

Guru Nanak Dev Ji's Parkash: the two dates

Vaisakh also holds a question Sikhs often ask: was Guru Nanak Dev Ji born in this month? Most of the janamsakhis, the traditional life stories, say he was born in the month of Baisakh (Vaisakh) in Samvat 1526, that is, April 1469. His recorded age at his passing, 70 years, 5 months and 7 days, counted back from Assu 1539, also points to a Vaisakh birth. On this evidence, Pal Singh Purewal's original Nanakshahi calendar fixed the Parkash Gurpurab on 1 Vaisakh, 14 April, the same day as Vaisakhi itself. But the Gurpurab the community loves and keeps is the full moon of Kattak, Kartik Purnima, celebrated at Nankana Sahib since at least 1868, and that is where the SGPC's current calendar keeps it: in Nanakshahi 558 it falls on 9 Magghar, 24 November 2026. Jugti presents both honestly: Vaisakh holds the birth month by the historical record, and Kattak Purnima holds the celebration.

The wheat harvest

Vaisakh is harvest. The wheat that turned gold in Chet is now cut, by combine harvester across most of Punjab and still by sickle in places, then threshed and carried to the grain markets. It is the year's hardest and happiest work: the rabi crop, sown in autumn, pays for the year in these weeks. Vaisakhi began as the harvest festival of this season, a thanksgiving for the crop, and that older joy still runs through the day, in fairs, bhangra and the first mangoes appearing as the heat builds.

Vaisakh in the Barah Maha

Guru Arjan Dev Ji's Barah Maha turns from Chet's joy to longing: ਵੈਸਾਖਿ ਧੀਰਨਿ ਕਿਉ ਵਾਢੀਆ ਜਿਨਾ ਪ੍ਰੇਮ ਬਿਛੋਹੁ ॥ In Vaisakh, how can the bride be patient, she who is separated in love? Having forgotten the Lord, Guru Arjan Dev Ji says, the soul clings to Maya, the deceiver, and nothing that fades, neither children, nor spouse, nor wealth, goes with her in the end. Guru Nanak Dev Ji's Tukhari Barah Maha sees the same month with a gentler eye: ਵੈਸਾਖੁ ਭਲਾ ਸਾਖਾ ਵੇਸ ਕਰੇ ॥ Vaisakh is beautiful, when the branches dress themselves in new leaf. In both poems the lesson is the same: the loveliest month of the year is only truly lovely for the soul that finds its Beloved in it.

The sorrow of Vaisakhi 1919

Vaisakh also carries Punjab's deepest modern sorrow. On 13 April 1919, Baisakhi day in the reckoning then in use, Amritsar was full: pilgrims at ਹਰਿਮੰਦਰ ਸਾਹਿਬ, farmers and traders at the annual cattle fair, and residents gathering in Jallianwala Bagh, a walled garden near the shrine, to protest the Rowlatt Act and the arrest of the local leaders Saifuddin Kitchlew and Satyapal. A ban on meetings had been proclaimed that morning but was not widely heard. In the evening, troops under Brigadier General Reginald Dyer blocked the garden's main entrance and fired on the unarmed crowd for about ten minutes.

The official British count put the dead at 379, with about 1,200 wounded; Indian estimates put the dead at over 1,000. The massacre broke public faith in British justice across India, and it remains fixed in Punjabi memory to the festival itself: for many families, Vaisakhi's joy and the martyrs of Jallianwala Bagh are remembered together. The Bagh is now a national memorial, a short walk from Harmandir Sahib, and its bullet marked walls are kept as they were.

When is Vaisakh?

Vaisakh begins on 14 April and ends on 14 May. It has 31 days. Its first day, 1 Vaisakh, is Vaisakhi, the festival of the Khalsa's founding and of the wheat harvest.

What happened on 1 Vaisakh?

Two of the greatest events of the Sikh year. In 1699, Guru Gobind Singh Ji founded the Khalsa at Anandpur Sahib, initiating the Panj Pyare and giving the Panth its enduring form. And by the historical evidence of the janamsakhis, 1 Vaisakh is also the birth date of Guru Nanak Dev Ji in 1469, which is why the original Nanakshahi calendar fixed his Parkash Gurpurab on this day, even though the community's great celebration is kept at Kattak Purnima.