Nitnem
The set daily prayers of Sikh practice, recited morning, evening and before sleep.
A fixed cycle of set prayers, recited privately or with family, often from a small prayer book called a gutka. The morning set, said in the pre-dawn hours, includes Japji Sahib, Jaap Sahib, and Tav-Prasad Savaiye, and many Sikhs add Anand Sahib and Chaupai Sahib. Rehras Sahib follows around sunset, and Kirtan Sohila closes the day before sleep. The Sikh code of conduct treats this cycle as the baseline of personal devotion.
Nitnem is the daily discipline: a set of compositions recited at fixed points of the day. The morning set is the longest and is recited in the early hours, and further compositions belong to the evening and to bedtime.
Many Sikhs recite them from memory, and children learn them by hearing them. Where they are read, the reading is from the scripture itself rather than from a devotional book.
The obligation is understood as personal and daily, and keeping it is one of the clearer markers of observant practice.
Does it have a text?
Fixed texts, drawn from the Guru Granth Sahib, in Gurmukhi script. None is published here, and the obstacle is unusual: the recensions differ, so an edition must state which it follows, and the only public-domain English translation identified is Trumpp's, which is both a shorter recension and the translation the community itself rejects.
When it comes up
Other forms of prayer in Sikh
- 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.
- Langar and seva — The free kitchen and the service around it, treated as devotional acts.
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.