The Sikh Calendar
Sikh dates have been argued over for thirty years. The dispute is about whether the anniversaries of the Gurus should move with the moon or hold a fixed date — and it is still unresolved.
Why this is difficult at all
Sikh history was recorded in the Bikrami calendar, the lunisolar system in general use across northern India. Its months track the moon, and lunar dates drift against the solar year — which is why Diwali and the Guru anniversaries fall on different Gregorian dates each year, sometimes weeks apart.
For a tradition that dates its own founding precisely and cares about the record, this creates a practical problem. It also creates the small honest difficulty this site runs into directly: converting an eighteenth-century Bikrami date to a Gregorian one is not always unambiguous, which is why entries like the fortnight of December 1704 give months rather than days.2,3
The Nanakshahi calendar
Pal Singh Purewal, an engineer who spent decades on the problem, presented a solar calendar for Sikh use in 1996. It fixes the Gurus’ anniversaries to constant dates, takes 1469 — Guru Nanak’s birth — as its epoch, and names its months from the scripture.
The SGPC passed it in 1999, the tercentenary of the Khalsa, and the Akal Takht accepted it in 2003. For six years the Sikh world largely ran on it, and a fixed Vaisakhi and a fixed anniversary for each Guru began to settle into ordinary use.1,2
The reversal
From 2009, groups including the Sant Samaj and sections of the taksals pressed for a return to Bikrami reckoning, and in 2010 the SGPC issued an amended calendar that moved most festival dates back into alignment with the lunar system.
The original is now generally called Mool Nanakshahi — root, or original, Nanakshahi. It continues to be followed by a great many gurdwaras, including the Pakistan Sikh Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee, while the SGPC’s amended version governs at Amritsar.1,2
Purewal died in 2022. The question is not settled.
What the argument is actually about
Underneath the arithmetic it is the same argument the Singh Sabha had in the nineteenth century, in another form: how far Sikh practice should be distinguished from the surrounding religious culture it grew up inside, and who has authority to decide.
A fixed solar calendar makes Sikh dates independent. Retaining Bikrami keeps them in step with a shared regional inheritance. Both positions have serious people holding them, and both can be argued from Sikh premises.
It is worth knowing about for a plain reason: if you look up when a gurpurab falls, the answer may depend on which gurdwara you ask.1,2
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