In 1699 Guru Gobind Singh instituted the Khalsa, an initiated order with a common discipline, common names, Singh for men, Kaur for women, and an outward form that made its members publicly identifiable. Initiation is by a ceremony involving sweetened water stirred with a double-edged sword.
Initiated Sikhs maintain five articles, conventionally called the five Ks after the initial letter of their Punjabi names: uncut hair, a comb, a steel bracelet, a short sword, and a prescribed undergarment. The uncut hair, kept covered by a turban in the case of most men, is the most visible of them. It is the reason Sikhs are recognisable in public and, in countries where the religion is little known, the reason they are frequently mistaken for members of other traditions.
The Khalsa was founded during a period of armed conflict with Mughal authority, and its discipline has a martial aspect as well as a devotional one. The tradition holds the two together in the ideal of the sant-sipahi, the saint-soldier, and in the doctrine that force may be resorted to, but only in a just cause and only when other means have failed.
Not all Sikhs are initiated. The community distinguishes initiated Sikhs, bound by the full code of conduct, from those who keep the outward form without having taken initiation and those who keep neither. All are Sikhs; what differs is the obligation assumed. The Rahit Maryada, the code of conduct issued in the twentieth century by the community's central religious authority, sets out the standard, though its interpretation is not uniform and some groups follow codes of their own.