Nirankari

The Nirankari is a Sikh reform order founded by Baba Dyal Das, also called Baba Dyal Singh, in 1851 in northwest Punjab, originally based in Rawalpindi, seeking to restore what its founder held were the authentic practices of Guru Nanak's era. Its name derives from the belief that God is Nirankar, or without form, opposing any physical representation of the divine, and its central practice is nam simaran, the remembering and repeating of God's name, alongside a distinctive belief in a lineage of living hereditary gurus extending beyond the ten recognized by orthodox Sikhism, treating the Guru Granth Sahib as an open text to which those living gurus' teachings can be added. During the 1947 partition of India the order abandoned its Rawalpindi base, which became part of Pakistan, and relocated to India, establishing a new center at Chandigarh in 1958.