Denomination

Udasi

Sikhism

Origin 1550 to 1700

An ascetic order within the wider Sikh world, traditionally traced to Sri Chand, the elder son of Guru Nanak, who took up a life of renunciation and celibacy. Unlike the householder ideal of mainstream Sikhism and the martial Khalsa, the Udasis are renouncers who blend the teaching of Guru Nanak with the practices of Hindu monasticism, and are often marked by matted hair, ash, ochre robes, or nakedness in the manner of Indian sadhus. Historically they served as missionaries and as custodians of Sikh shrines, especially during times of persecution when they preserved and spread the Gurus' message, and they maintain their own centres, the akharas and deras. Because they venerate images and follow ascetic and Hindu customs foreign to the Khalsa code, their relation to orthodox Sikhism has been ambivalent. They stand as a distinct monastic and syncretic strand on the borders of the tradition.

Facts

Identity

Also Known As

Udasis 1

Origins

Origin Period

1550 to 1700 1

Origin Period

Documented as an organised order from the seventeenth century 1

Place of Origin

The Punjab, with centres at Varanasi and Haridwar 1

Founder

Mainstream Sikh accounts and Udasi accounts describe his relation to his father's teaching differently 1

Founder

Traced by the order to Sri Chand (1494-1629), Guru Nanak's elder son 1

Belief

Defining Doctrinal Position

A celibate renunciant discipline outside the Khalsa rahit 1Sikhism

Organisation

Governance

Authority through monastic ordination lineage and its seats 1

Akharas and deras under mahants, in a succession of celibate ascetics.

Ordination

Restricted to men 1

Ordination

Celibacy required of the ordained 1

Ordination

Ordination is into a monastic order, not to a congregation 1

Practice

Liturgical Language

Punjabi in Gurmukhi script 1

History

Separation or Divergence

The mainstream Panth: the Udasis keep a celibate ascetic discipline that the Gurus did not enjoin, and were removed from control of the historic gurdwaras by the Gurdwara reform movement of 1920-1925 1

Separation or Divergence

Udasi and mainstream Sikh accounts describe Sri Chand's relation to his father's teaching differently 1

Date of Separation

1600 to 1925 1

Status

Status Today

Living tradition, practised today 1

Much reduced: the order lost control of the historic gurdwaras in the Gurdwara reform movement of 1920-1925 and now maintains its own deras and akharas.

Learn More

Renouncers on the Edge of a Householder Religion

The Udasis are an ascetic order sitting on a boundary that Sikhism draws firmly, and their position illustrates the boundary better than any statement of doctrine would.

Sikhism is emphatically a householder religion. Guru Nanak rejected renunciation, celibacy and withdrawal, and taught that the religious life is lived in work, family and community. The Udasi order is traced to Sri Chand, Nanak's elder son, who took up precisely the ascetic life his father had declined to recommend. Whether that traditional account is exact is less certain than the use made of it: the order becomes prominent as an order in the seventeenth century.

Udasis are renouncers. They are celibate, maintain their own centres, akharas and deras, and present in the manner of Indian sadhus, with matted hair, ash, ochre, and sometimes nakedness. They revere the Guru Granth Sahib, and they also honour the Vedas and Puranas, use images, and read Sikh scripture within a broadly Vedantic frame. That combination is why their position is contested, and it is why they were at home in what is sometimes called Sanatan Sikhism, the older and more accommodating understanding of the tradition that the reform movements displaced.

Their historical service was substantial. Through the eighteenth century, when the Khalsa was under armed persecution and Sikhs were periodically outlawed, Udasi mahants held and maintained many of the shrines, and carried the teaching into regions the Khalsa did not reach.

Dispossession, and an Unresolved Status

That service ended in the loss of everything the order held.

From the 1870s the Singh Sabha movement, and within it the Tat Khalsa wing, worked to define Sikhism as sharply distinct from Hinduism. Udasi practice (image worship, Brahminical ritual, Vedantic exegesis, ascetic celibacy), was precisely what that programme identified as accretion. The Gurdwara Reform Movement of the 1920s turned the argument into a campaign: after several years of agitation, with considerable violence, the movement expelled the Udasi mahants from the Sikh shrines and transferred them to an elected committee. An act of 1925 defined Sikh identity in terms that effectively excluded syncretic groups.

The order survived in its own akharas, and its status has never been settled. In 2002 the Indian Supreme Court held that Udasi deras are not gurdwaras, a ruling about property rather than about theology, and the shrine committee then declared Udasis to be Sikhs. The legal answer and the communal answer point in opposite directions, and both are still cited.

There is no credible figure for the number of Udasis. They persist chiefly around their akharas in Punjab, Haryana and Uttarakhand, and are frequently counted as Hindu ascetics by observers and as Sikhs by themselves.

The order is worth an entry because it records something the modern tradition has largely written out: that for most of Sikh history the boundary between Sikh and Hindu practice was considerably more permeable than the settled account allows, and that the settling of it was a specific project, at a specific date, with winners and losers.

Udasi

4 entries

Status Within the Tradition

Origin Period Start Year

Affirmation Of

Category of Belief

Subject

Obligation

Connections

Belongs to Tradition

Sikhism

Branch Of

Sikhism

Founded By

Sri Chand

The Udasi order of celibate ascetics traces its founding to him.

Governed By Polity

Monastic Lineage Polity

Holds Element

Harmandir Sahib (The Golden Temple)

Udasi custodians held the temple and its establishment through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and their removal by the reform movement of the nineteen twenties transferred it to an elected committee.

Ik Onkar

The Udasi order keeps the Guru Granth Sahib and the opening formula with it, and the written sign travelled with the order into the establishments it founded well outside Punjab.

Source SikhismW. H. McLeod

Naam Simran

The Udasi order keeps remembrance of the name as its central practice within an ascetic and renunciant way of life the Khalsa does not follow.

Source The Oxford Handbook of Sikh StudiesPashaura Singh and Louis E. Fenech (eds.)

Nankana Sahib

The shrine was under a Udasi custodian until the killings of 1921 there, which made its transfer the decisive episode of the whole reform movement.

Sat (Truth)

The Udasi order keeps truth as the ground of its ascetic discipline while standing outside the Khalsa rite of initiation.

Source The Oxford Handbook of Sikh StudiesPashaura Singh and Louis E. Fenech (eds.)

Shabad Kirtan

Udasi establishments kept the scripture and its singing while taking the dress and the discipline of Hindu renunciants, which is why the Khalsa reform came to treat them as standing outside.

Source The Construction of Religious Boundaries: Culture, Identity, and Diversity in the Sikh TraditionHarjot Oberoi

Sikh Rehat Maryada

The Udasi order predates the code and stands outside the Khalsa initiation it regulates, so the code governs the Panth without governing the order.

Source The Oxford Handbook of Sikh StudiesPashaura Singh and Louis E. Fenech (eds.)

The Khalsa

The Udasi order descends from Guru Nanak's elder son and its ascetics do not take amrit or keep the five articles, though Udasi custodians managed many Sikh shrines until the reform movement of the nineteen twenties.

Members

Bada Udasin Akhara

Naya Udasin Akhara

Nirmal Akhara

Objects and Practices of This Tradition

Ascetic renunciation and celibate monasticism

The Udasis, traced to Guru Nanak's son Sri Chand, live as celibate renunciants with ash and matted hair, a monasticism the main Sikh tradition set aside in favour of the householder's life.

Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)

Celibacy / Monasticism

The Udasis are renouncers in a religion that rejects renunciation, tracing their celibacy to Guru Nanak's elder son Sri Chand and living as sadhus with ash and ochre, which is why their standing relative to the Khalsa has always been uneasy.

Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)

Gurmukh and manmukh

The two directions a life can face, toward the Guru or toward one's own mind, is Sikh teaching held by this order.

Source SikhismW. H. McLeod

Guru Granth Sahib

This order reveres the Guru Granth Sahib as Sikh scripture even as it blends the teaching of Guru Nanak with the practices of Hindu asceticism.

Source The Guru Granth Sahib: Canon, Meaning and AuthorityPashaura Singh

Guru Nanak Gurpurab

Udasi centres keep Guru Nanak's birth with particular attachment, since the order traces itself to his elder son Sri Chand, and observe it at their own akharas and deras alongside the shrines in their custody.

Source The Sikh Religion: Its Gurus, Sacred Writings and Authors, vol. 1Max Arthur Macauliffe

Haumai

The self that has made itself the centre, described as a chronic disease that carries its own cure, is Sikh teaching on the human condition held by this order.

Source SikhismW. H. McLeod

Hukam

Living within the divine order rather than petitioning against it is Sikh teaching held by this order.

Source The Guru Granth Sahib: Canon, Meaning and AuthorityPashaura Singh

Karma: action determines future rebirth

Naam

The divine Name as God's own self-disclosure and the means of a person's transformation is central Sikh teaching held by this order.

Source SikhismW. H. McLeod

One formless God (Ik Onkar)

The Udasis hold the one formless God of Sikh teaching while approaching it through renunciation, and their practice has long stood at the edge of the wider Sikh community for that reason.

Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)

Reincarnation (samsara)

Sarbat da bhala

The petition for the good of all that closes Sikh prayer, universal by construction, is held by this order.

Source SikhismW. H. McLeod

Seva (selfless service)

Udasi centres served historically as custodians of Sikh shrines, keeping and feeding them through periods of persecution, so their service took the form of guardianship and missionary travel rather than the settled langar of a congregation.

Source Guru Granth SahibCompiled by Guru Arjan, 1604; final recension attributed to Guru Gobind Singh, 1706the holders' own account

Shabad

The divine Word, treated as the Guru itself, is Sikh teaching held by this order.

Source The Guru Granth Sahib: Canon, Meaning and AuthorityPashaura Singh

Originated In

Punjab

Source Historical Dictionary of Sikhism, 3rd editionLouis E. Fenech and W. H. McLeod

Uses Liturgical Language

Punjabi

Sources

1. Historical Dictionary of Sikhism, 3rd edition

Louis E. Fenech and W. H. McLeod, Rowman and Littlefield, 2014

s.v. Udasi
Originated In: Punjab, Stored origin-place property on this entity, cited to this source: The Punjab, with centres at Varanasi and Haridwar

View the Source

The Oxford Handbook of Sikh Studies

Pashaura Singh and Louis E. Fenech (eds.), Oxford University Press, 2014View the Source

The Construction of Religious Boundaries: Culture, Identity, and Diversity in the Sikh Tradition

Harjot Oberoi, University of Chicago Press, 1994

Sikhism

W. H. McLeod, Penguin Books, 1997View the Source

Sikh Gurdwaras Act 1925

Legislature of the Punjab, 1925The definition of Sikh, and the transfer of shrine control

Quote, The definition of Sikh, and the transfer of shrine control

The act following the Gurdwara Reform Movement defined Sikh identity in terms that effectively excluded syncretic groups.

Encyclopedia of Religion

Mircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.), Macmillan Reference, 2005Entry on the Udasis

Quote, Entry on the Udasis

An ascetic order that held Sikh shrines through the eighteenth century and was dispossessed of them in the 1920s.

View the Source

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Udasi

Ascetic renunciation and celibate monasticism

Karma: action determines future rebirth

One formless God (Ik Onkar)

Reincarnation (samsara)

Belongs to Tradition

Branch Of

Founded By

Governed By Polity

Holds Element

Members

Objects and Practices of This Tradition

Originated In

Uses Liturgical Language

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