Langar and seva
The free kitchen and the service around it, treated as devotional acts.
Devotion expressed as service. Every gurdwara maintains a langar, a free vegetarian kitchen and meal open to anyone, with all diners seated together as equals regardless of religion, caste, or status. Cooking, serving, and cleaning are seva, selfless service, and Sikh tradition treats such work, along with practical help to neighbors and strangers, as continuous with prayer rather than separate from it.
Langar is the free meal served at every gurdwara to anyone who comes, without regard to religion, caste or means, and eaten sitting on the floor together. The seating is the argument: it was instituted deliberately against caste distinctions, and the equality is enacted rather than stated.
Seva is service, and much of it is the work that makes langar happen: cooking, serving, washing up, cleaning shoes at the door. It is done by everyone, including people who would not do such work anywhere else.
Both are understood as devotional acts rather than as charity attached to worship, which is why they are listed here among forms of prayer at all.
Does it have a text?
Neither has a text. They are acts, and the tradition's point in placing them alongside recitation is precisely that devotion is not only spoken.
When it comes up
Other forms of prayer in Sikh
- Nitnem — The set daily prayers of Sikh practice, recited morning, evening and before sleep.
- Naam simran — Remembrance of the divine name, repeated aloud or in the breath.
- Ardas — The congregational petition that closes every Sikh service and marks every undertaking.
- Sikh kirtan — The sung scripture that occupies most of a Sikh service.
- Path — The reading of the Guru Granth Sahib, sometimes continuously from beginning to end.
This page describes a practice. It does not tell you how to perform it, or whether you should. Practice varies by region, community and household far more than a page like this can carry, and nobody credentialed in the tradition has signed anything here. The full dossier names its sources.