Sikhism

Sikhi keeps no idols. The Guru Granth Sahib is the living Guru, and there is nothing in the tradition that gets bathed, dressed, fed or offered flowers. So everything on this page is an emblem or a picture of a place, never a figure to be worshipped, and that distinction is the reason this page reads differently from the rest of this site. If you have arrived here from one of our Hindu collections expecting a murti, this is deliberately not that.

You will still see these listed and searched as an Ek Onkar idol for the car dashboard, on our own product pages included, because idol is simply the word the market uses for anything small and metal that sits on a dashboard. It is a search habit rather than a description of what the thing is or how it should be kept. People also search for the same pieces as Punjabi gift items and as Sikhi gifts, and they mean the same three things.

What Ik Onkar and the Khanda actually say

Ik Onkar opens the Mool Mantar and is the first thing written in the Guru Granth Sahib: the numeral one, then Onkar. One creator, and by extension one humanity, which is why it carries the weight it does. Ik Onkar is the closer transliteration, while Ek Onkar and Ek Omkar are how most people type it, and Ek Onkar Satnam is the fuller opening phrase. Waheguru is a different thing again: it is the name Sikhs use for God in simran, not a symbol you can hold.

It is worth saying plainly that Ik Onkar and Om are not versions of each other. Different scripts, the Gurmukhi character for Ik Onkar and the Devanagari one for Om, different traditions, and they do not substitute for one another. If you are buying for a Sikh household and you are not certain which of the two you are looking at, that is the single mistake worth avoiding here, and it is an easy one to make from a thumbnail.

The Khanda is the emblem of the Khalsa and it has three parts. The double edged khanda in the middle stands for divine knowledge. The circle around it, the chakkar, has no beginning and no end, like the one it stands for. The two kirpans on either side are miri and piri, worldly and spiritual authority held together rather than kept apart, which is Guru Hargobind's contribution to how Sikhs understand the two. It reads as an emblem of identity and courage, which is why it turns up on cars, gates and letterheads far more often than anywhere devotional.

Harmandir Sahib in a pocket, and why it is a keepsake

The Golden Temple is the English name. Sikhs mostly say Harmandir Sahib, or Darbar Sahib, and it stands at Amritsar. Ours is a pocket temple, the same folding format we use elsewhere for a deity, and the difference is the point: elsewhere the format holds a figure, here it holds a picture of a place. It opens to show the building in gold relief and shuts flat enough to live in a bag or a drawer. It is bought after the pilgrimage far more often than before it.

It is a memento and not a shrine you install, and nobody is expected to light anything in front of it. That is worth knowing if you are giving it, because it means it can sit on a desk in an office without anybody having to decide what to do about it. The rest of the format is in pocket temples.

What we do not make, and where to go for it

We make no likeness of Guru Nanak, or of any of the Gurus, and we do not intend to. No photograph of Guru Nanak exists, so every picture of him is an artist's imagining, and the Akal Takht has objected more than once to the Gurus being shown in human form. Framed pictures are kept in a great many homes and we are not ruling on that. We are saying it is not ours to make, and a figure would be further still.

We also do not make the things that belong to a Gurdwara rather than to a person. A Rumala Sahib, a saroop or a gutka of the Guru Granth Sahib, a rehal to rest it on, a kara, a kanga or a kirpan: those come from a Sikh religious supplier and should. Nor do we make a pendant, a locket, a sticker or a car hanging, all of which people look for and none of which we do. What we make stands on its own base.

How these are made, and the one thing that ends them

A resin core, a layer of copper over it, then gold electroplated on top. The copper is the part worth explaining, because resin does not conduct and so cannot be plated directly, and the copper is what the gold keys onto and what makes the surface even. It is also why these are light, which matters on a dashboard pad, and why the relief holds crisp at a size where poured metal would go soft, on the tips of the Khanda's kirpans and across the facade of Harmandir Sahib.

It is why water is the one thing that ends them, rather than age on a shelf. Dust with a dry soft cloth, never a metal polish and never anything acidic, and keep them away from the wet cloth when a car interior is being cleaned, because that is where these actually get damaged. Every piece is checked at our own warehouse before it goes out.

Fitting one in a car, which is where most of these go

Clean the mounting patch first with something that leaves no residue. Dashboards are usually treated with an interior polish and nothing adheres through that film, which is why most dashboard pieces come loose in the first week rather than the first year. Put it where it is not in your sightline and not on an airbag panel, which is a genuine safety point rather than a preference. On a dark dashboard in an Indian summer the top surface gets properly hot, so a piece that sits on its own base is easier to live with than one perched high. Worth knowing before it arrives: the stand in the photographs is a photography prop and does not come with the piece.

The Ek Onkar and the Khanda sit alongside the Hindu pieces in our car dashboard range for the same reason: it is one format serving different faiths. The wider plated range is in gold and silver plated pieces.

Giving one, and what it costs

The occasions these genuinely suit are a new car, a house move, a wedding and a Gurpurab. A dashboard Ek Onkar is the standard new car gift in Sikh families and needs no explaining when it is handed over. The Golden Temple keepsake is the better one for a house move or a first flat, and it is the one that works for a colleague or a boss, since it folds shut and asks nothing of the room it goes into. The Khanda reads as identity rather than devotion, which makes it the comfortable gift to a younger man, to a Sikh friend whose practice you would rather not presume about, or to a household you know only slightly. For a child, the folding Golden Temple is the one that survives being handled.

If you are not Sikh yourself, all three are perfectly normal things to give, and a Sikh emblem from a friend outside the faith is read as attention rather than as trespass. The thing that would land badly is treating the emblem as a deity, which is most of why this page is written the way it is.

Everything here is under 3,000 and nothing is under 1,000, which is the honest shape of the range: a considered small gift rather than a token, with no cheap end, because a badly plated emblem is not worth making. Everything ships in our own packaging, made to be opened rather than merely to survive the journey, which counts here because most of these are handed over rather than kept.

For a Gurdwara programme, a Nagar Kirtan, a wedding party or an office set, one design in quantity reads better than a mixture, and the depth is there on the Ek Onkar and the Khanda. Send the count and the date through the bulk order enquiry page, or see corporate gifts. For the festival itself, see Guru Nanak Jayanti, and for the new home, griha pravesh and housewarming gifts.