Udasis (Gurmukhi: ਉਦਾਸੀ ਸੰਪਰਦਾ; udāsī saparadā) (Devanagari: उदासी संप्रदाय), also spelt as Udasins, also known as Nanak Putras (meaning "sons of Nanak"), are a religious sect of ascetic sadhus centred in northern India who follow a tradition known as Udasipanth. The Udasis are a type of Sehajdhari or Sanatan Sikh, rather than orthodox Khalsa Sikhs. Similar Sikh sects to the Udasis include the Nirmalas and Sewapanthis. They were historically one of the first missionary traditions of Sikhism.
Becoming custodians of Sikh shrines in the 18th century, they were notable interpreters and spreaders of the Sikh philosophy during that time. They alongside the Nirmalas were responsible for the spreading of Sanatan Sikhism during the 19th century and were a key component in the indigenous, pre-colonial education system. However, their religious practices border on a syncretism of Sikhism and Hinduism, and they did not conform to the Khalsa standards as ordained by Guru Gobind Singh. When the Lahore Singh Sabha reformers, dominated by Tat Khalsa Sikhs, would hold them responsible for indulging in ritual practices antithetical to Sikhism, as well as personal vices and corruption, the Udasi mahants were expelled from the Sikh shrines.
Etymology Udasi and Udasin is derived from the Sanskrit word Udāsīn, which means one who is indifferent to or disregardful of worldly attachments, a stoic, or a mendicant. The word Udasi is derived from the Sanskrit word , meaning 'detached, journey', reflecting an approach to spiritual and temporal life, or from ('detachment'), signifying indifference to or renunciation of worldly concerns. The word udas, meaning renunciation, came to be applied as a general label for the renunciates, the Udasis. According to Satish K. Kapoor, the term derives from the words āsina ("sits") and ut ("above"), becoming udāsīna, as the Udasis are said to be above the material world and senses. The term udasi is also used to describe the four travel-tours of Guru Nanak.
History
Origin
According to their traditional origin narrative, the sect was established in the Puranic age, tracing back to the four Kumaras who were bestowed with divine knowledge (divya jnana) by Vishnu, with them considering Sri Chand (whom they refer to as Sri Candracarya) as being the 165th spiritual master in their lineage. Udasis believe that Sri Chand received enlightenment from his father Guru Nanak before he began his own spiritual career.
Historically speaking, the sect was founded by and based on the teachings of Guru Nanak's elder son Sri Chand (1494–1629, other sources give a death year of 1643). Sri Chand, contrary to his father's emphasis on participation in society, propagated ascetic renunciation and celibacy. Another Sikh tradition links the Udasis to Baba Gurditta, the eldest son of Guru Hargobind, and there is dispute on whether the Udasis originated with Sri Chand or Gurditta. A third and common viewpoint is that Sri Chand was the founder of the sect and passed the leadership to Baba Gurditta as his successor.
Sri Chand had a traditional upbringing. He underwent the yajnopavīta ceremony, studied at a gurukul, and spent time alone in wilderness in a state of meditation. While his father was out on tours, Sri Chand was spiritually training himself in yoga, asceticism, celibacy, and inner control in-order to become worthy of being his father's spiritual successor. However, his father Nanak passed over him in-favour of his follower Bhai Lehna, who became the next guru, Guru Angad. The new Sikh guru shifted to Khadur whilst Sri Chand and his brother held possession of Kartarpur, where Nanak had spent his later years. But Sri Chand, disheartened due to the fact he was passed over for the succession to the guruship in favour of a comparatively more recent devotee of his father, lost interest in worldly affairs and left the management of Kartarpur to his brother, Lakhmi Das. Instead, in 1538 Sri Chand began meditating at the samadhi that he constructed dedicated to his father and began only wearing a loin-cloth. In 1548, Sri Chand moved to Bath village near Pathankot where he would live for the rest of his life. Sri began teaching his own interpretation of his father's philosophy. Sri Chand incorporated his father's concept of Sangat and Langar to create an environment to spiritually improve both individuals and society. A key difference lay in lifestyle, where Sri Chand advocated renunciation whilst the mainstream Sikhs were house-holders who had families.
Nanak had worn the dress (bhekh) of ascetics and went on long tours, but he abandoned the robes of an ascetic and adopted the dress of the common-folk after he settled down at Kartarpur. Hymns authored by Nanak show that an ideal Sikh becomes like an ascetic (Udasi) despite being engaged in the world as the divine is present everywhere and in everything. Despite the teachings and lived example of his father, Sri Chand rejected living amongst the world, preferring instead total renunciation, not the mental renunciation that his father had taught while living a house-holders life. Sri Chand is claimed to have conducted distant tours of the Indian subcontinent and beyond, similar to his father. Lore also connects Sri Chand to performing miracle feats. Furthermore, Sri Chand introduced the practice of simultaneous worship of five Indic deities (Ganesha, Surya, Vishnu, Shiva, & Shakti), a concept known as pancadevopasana, perhaps to lower the divides present within the Hindu community to slow the trend of Hindus becoming Muslims.
Sri Chand kept friendly ties with the successive Sikh gurus, his father's successors. Sri Chand's conduct and lineage afforded him respect in the Sikh community at the time, despite differences in viewpoints. Despite this, Nanak's immediate successors, namely Angad, Amar Das, and Ram Das, made certain to state that renunciation was not in-line with Sikh orthopraxy. Guru Amar Das wrote a composition known as Sakhi Guru Amar Das Ki Mehle 3 warning Sikhs against becoming renunciates. In 1629, Sri Chand asked Guru Hargobind to let him one of his children join him in his religious activities, who was decided to be Baba Gurditta. Sri Chand would adopt Baba Gurditta as his spiritual successor, despite Gurditta not being a renunciate. Whilst the Bhatt Bahis assert that Sri Chand died in 1629, Udasis believed he disappeared after giving a final sermon to a Bhutanese disciple named Brahmaketu. Anand Ghan, an Udasi scholar, believed Sri Chand to be the true successor of Guru Nanak.
Spread of the sect The Udasis first came to prominence in the 17th century, and gradually began to manage Sikh shrines and establishments in the 18th century, from where they espoused a model of Sikhism that diverged considerably from that of the Khalsa. According to Harjot Singh Oberoi, the Udasis (especially its monastic orders and their sub-branches, consisting of wandering ascetics and mendicants) were critical for spreading Sikhism in the areas peripheral to and outside of the core Sikh homeland and bases in central Punjab, consisting of liminal zones, by acting as cultural mediators of Sikhism. They accomplished this by promoting a form of the religion known as Sanatan Sikhism, which accommodated Hindu beliefs and practice. They were able to introduce Sikh philosophy to Hindus in these zones. They preached at popular places of pilgrimage and festivals, teaching about renunciation and salvation. Thus, Oberoi credits the Udasis and the Nirmalas for spreading Sikhism across geographical frontiers and cultural barriers, in areas that may have been neutral or hostile to normative, heterodox Sikhism. Gradually, these peripheral zones had a monastic centre established within them, which consolidated their gradual entry into the Sikh sphere of influence. Furthermore, the Udasi establishments played a critical role in the pre-colonial indigenous education system. Individual Udasis were skilled as historians, authors, exagetes, teachers, trascribers, translators, and as traditional doctors (especially in ayurveda).
After Sri Chand, four hearths (known as dhuāns or dhunās) were established at Hoshiarpur, Kiratpur, Kartarpur, and Nanakmatta respectively to continue his teachings. Baba Gurditta is believed to have set-up the four-hearth system after succeeding Sri Chand as the religious leader. The four heads of each of these monastic-orders were Al-mast, Baba Hamsa, Gonda, and Phula Shah. This system was adopted sometime in the first half of the 17th century and these four preachers became known as the Adi-Udasis.Singh, Sulakhan. “Heterodoxy In Sikhism : The Case Of The Udasls.” Proceedings of the Indian History Congress, vol. 43, 1982, pp. 383–87. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/44141250. Accessed 12 Apr. 2026. All four of the Adi-Udasis were originally from Srinagar in Kashmir. Also, they were two pairs of brothers. Bhai Almast was the elder brother of Bhai Balu Hasna. Bhai Govinda (elder brother) was appointed on 11 September 1637 and Bhai Phul (younger brother) was appointed the next day on 12 September 1637. Gurditta made the four preachers adopt his dress, which would become charactistic of the Udasis. He also made them take an ember from Sri Chand's hearth to their new place of establishment to set-up their own hearths. These four centres of the Udasis were named after their head-missionary. Each of the four dhuans had their own active area of preaching, namely (1) eastern India (base at Nanakmata), (2) western Panjab and Kashmir, (3) Malwa, and (4) Doaba. Almast conducted missionary work in eastern India, such as at Puri, at Nanakmatta in Uttarakhand, and in Sindh. Balu Hasna evangelized in Kartarpur, Pothohar, and Peshawar. Govinda preached in the Doaba region while Phul conducted his missionary work in Hoshiarpur. Govinda's dhuni disappeared after his death. Followers of Phul would later preach in central India, in what is now Maharashtra.
The Udasis propagated across the subcontinent and re-discovered places related to Sikh history that had been forgotten and abandoned. Over-time, six ascetical orders of the Udasis propped-up, known as the Bakśiśa or Bakhshishāṅ (meaning "bounty"), which were prevalent during the mid-to-late 17th and early 18th century during the period of Guru Har Rai to Guru Gobind Singh. Many of the prime figures of these Bakhshishan sects were originally masands serving the Sikh gurus, who conferred upon them a preaching mission, known as a Bakhshish. These six ascetical sub-sects were headed by Bhakta Bhagawana, Ajita Mal, Suthare Shah, Mihaan Sahib, Bakht Mal, and Sangata Sahib. The most successful of these six sub-sects were the ones associated with Bhakta Bhagawana and Sangata Sahib. There were also other, lesser-known Bakhshishan sub-sects aside from the six main ones, with some of the more obscure and esoteric ones being traced to the Minas. These sub-sects further founded Udasi sites, such as deras, sangats, maths, and akharas, in various places in the subcontinent. The Udasis reached proximal and distant areas away from the Punjab. Some of the regions they are known to have been active in include numerous areas of Punjab but also Kabul, Dhaka, Gorakh Mata, Jagannath Puri, Rameswaram, Prayag, and Haridwar. An inscription linked to the Udasis has also been discovered at a Zoroastrian temple in Azerbaijan, the Ateshgah of Baku.