About
Mission Sikhism is a non-profit, community-built history of the Sikh faith, from 1469 to today — offered freely, without paywalls, in the spirit of sarbat da bhala, the welfare of all.
Our one promise
Sikh history is often retold without references. This site takes the opposite approach: every entry names the works it rests on, and nothing is published until it is. The build refuses an entry with no sources. You can see the result on the Library page, which gathers every source cited across the whole site into one bibliography.
How the site is built
The history is organised three ways over one set of facts: as a timeline, as an interactive map where every event is placed where it happened, and as the people who shaped it. Alongside sit The Faith and Culture & Heritage. The pages are plain text files built into a static site, so it is fast, durable, and cheap to run; the only code that runs on the server takes the gurdwara and book forms.
How entries are checked, and who answers for them
Naming a source is the floor, not the finish. What the site can promise today, and what it cannot yet:
- One maintainer is responsible. The site is run by a single volunteer maintainer, who decides what is published and answers every correction sent to contact@missionsikhism.org. We keep private names private, but the responsibility is not shared out to no one: if an entry is wrong, that is the address that fixes it.
- There is no outside review panel yet. Entries have not been reviewed by independent historians or by a recognised Sikh institution. If that changes, this paragraph will say who and when.
- What the build checks. Every entry must list its sources, and every numbered marker in the text must point at one of them. A program cannot tell whether the cited passage actually says what the sentence claims; that is checked by reading, and errors slip through.
- Precise locators are being added. Many book sources name the work without the page or chapter yet; each one shows no page given yet under it, so you can see where the pointer is still coarse. The most-read and most-disputed claims get their pages first.
- Tradition, evidence and scholarship are kept apart. The standard for every entry is to say whether a detail comes from the Sikh tradition (the janamsakhis, for instance), from a source written at the time, or from later scholarship, and to say so where historians disagree. Where an entry falls short of that, tell us.
How a correction is handled. Send the entry and, if you can, where you found the better reading. The maintainer checks it against the cited work and the one you name, changes the entry if it holds, and the change shows in the entry's Last updated date. Where the sources themselves disagree, the entry is rewritten to give both readings rather than to pick a winner silently.
Contribute
This project grows as research grows, and it is better for more eyes. If you have spotted an inaccuracy, found a stronger source, or know of an event not yet documented, we would like to hear from you. You do not need to be a historian, and you do not need an account anywhere.
We ask for one thing, the same thing the whole site runs on: tell us where you found it. A book with its author and page, or a link, is enough. That is what lets a maintainer check the claim, credit the source, and put it in front of the next reader with the same confidence as everything else here.
Both are short forms. Every gurdwara and every book is checked by hand before it appears on the site.
Email a correction Suggest an entry
These two open your mail app, addressed to contact@missionsikhism.org with a few prompts already written. If you would rather just write in your own words, that address works on its own. Reading a specific entry? The “Suggest a correction” link on its catalog card does the same thing with the entry already filled in.
Frequently asked questions
Why is everything sourced?
Because trust is the point. A history that cannot be checked is just a story. Requiring a citation for every claim keeps the site honest and lets readers follow any fact back to where it comes from.
How is the history divided?
Into six eras, from Guru Nanak in 1469 to the present day. The framing is meant to be clear and faithful to the tradition; if you think an era is drawn wrongly, that is exactly the kind of feedback we welcome.
Who is behind it?
It is a volunteer, non-profit effort, dedicated to Waheguru and offered as a free resource for study, practice and research. One maintainer is responsible for what is published; see how entries are checked.
Can I reuse the content?
Yes. The text of every entry is shared under CC BY-SA 4.0: copy it, adapt it, teach from it, as long as you credit Mission Sikhism and share what you make on the same terms. Images keep the credit and licence shown beside each one.