The Sikh sect linked to Henry Nowak’s killer

The air was thick with incense and tension. The hall was already bustling, as men and boys gathered under the shadow of ceremonial weapons and the resonant boom of a Sikh war drum. Some looked as though they were preparing for battle, wearing empty bandoliers and tactical camouflage vests, four-foot swords hanging by their sides. I was invited to sit and eat at the free kitchen, just like at every Sikh temple, as I watched the foyer fill up.

Yet as more and more people arrived, a man with a quizzical look approached me. He asked if I was a journalist. When I said I was, he told me that this was a private event, and that nobody would talk to me anyway. The meeting’s outcome, he added, would be publicised on social media. When I asked where exactly, he smiled and answered glibly. “The same channels where you found out about this meeting.” I wasn’t going to argue, shuffling past a thronged mass of conical turbans towards the door.

I had come to the Shri Guru Hargobind Sahib Ji Chauni Temple, in a quiet Coventry suburb, in search of the Nihangs: a fearsome Sikh warrior order. You likely haven’t heard of them — but you’ll almost certainly have heard of Vickrum Singh Digwa. He’s the man who stabbed Henry Nowak on a Southampton street last December, and whose resulting conviction for murder has generated one of Britain’s periodic fights about multiculturalism and belonging.

These debates have now raged for weeks, but one thing has remained largely unnoticed: a passage in Judge William Mousley’s sentencing remarks, where he paused to explain that Digwa belonged to the Nihangs, the same Sikh group I’d encountered in Coventry. This matters, and far beyond Vickrum Digwa — for the Nihangs are in many ways a symbol of our troubled moment.

A Nihang at the 2024 Sikh Memorial March in London. (Liz Harris)

Only about a quarter of the world’s 25 million Sikhs are baptised. These so-called Khalsa are the only Sikhs required to wear the religion’s “five Ks”, including uncut hair ( kesh ), the steel bracelet ( kara ), and the now-infamous kirpan blade. The Nihangs are a minority within this minority. Today, there are estimated to be somewhere between a few hundred thousand and a million worldwide, concentrated in the Punjab. In the UK, the movement has a few hundred adherents.

The word “Nihang” itself means “crocodile” in classical Persian or “without attachments” in Sanskrit. Both translations evoke the order’s martial roots. Formed in the 18th century, as a vanguard against Muslim Mughal persecution, the Nihangs embodied an ethos that fused spirituality with steel. “When all other means have failed,” wrote Gobind Singh, the tenth and final living Sikh guru in 1705, “it is righteous to unsheathe the sword.”

And so it proved, with the Nihangs long acting as the shock troops of Sikh military power. These irregular formations fought the Mughals, held mountain passes against Afghan invaders, and were so notorious that the British later issued shoot-on-sight orders against them. G.H. Hodson, a colonial officer who fought them in the mid-19th century, described how one Nihang “rushed to meet me like a tiger. I never beheld such desperation and fury in my life.”

Clothing was crucial to this fiery reputation. Their appearance, then and now, is extraordinary. The traditional Nihang outfit is deep navy blue, the colour chosen by Gobind Singh after campaigning against the Mughals at the turn of the 18th century. Over this, and as I saw in Coventry, Nihangs wear towering conical turbans, the dastar bunga , ringed with steel quoits called chakram . They have a special, almost theological, relationship with steel itself, which they call sarbloh , the “all-iron”. Crafting their weapons from steel, they even eat their food with sarbloh utensils, viewing the metal as infused with divine strength and martial purity.

It’s precisely this glimmer of violence that makes the Digwa case so distinctive. The killer carried two knives the evening he stabbed Henry Nowak. The first — a small, curved kirpan under his clothing — is the ceremonial blade required of all Khalsa Sikhs. Its carrying is protected under British law, provided the blade doesn’t exceed nine inches. This is familiar territory: even before the Nowak case, and all the public debate that’s followed, the kirpan exemption had been debated, defended, and litigated for decades. What made Digwa unusual was that second knife. It was an 8.2-inch pesh-kabz , a straight-bladed dagger designed to pierce chainmail armour and worn visibly. Though it’s also sometimes worn by other Khalsa Sikhs, this other blade is especially associated with the Nihang. Digwa himself wore it to work. He wore it in public. He had told himself that this was part of who he was.

Nihangs are famous for their weapons. (Soltan Frédéric/Sygma/Getty)

Professor Gurnam Singh, a sociologist at the University of Warwick who gave evidence at the trial, said that over the last 30 years there has been a trend among younger S…