AHC/WI : No Sikhism

From what I know it wasn't covered yet in AH.com.

How could you prevent the appearance of Sikhism? I suppose killing or butterflying part of Guru Nanak's live could do it, but wouldn't something similar still appears?

And what would be the short term and long terms consequences for the sub-continent?
Would it impact much on social stratification, preventing an early rise of opposition against it?
Would it help significantly the late Moghol Empire?
 

SinghKing

Banned
From what I know it wasn't covered yet in AH.com.

How could you prevent the appearance of Sikhism? I suppose killing or butterflying part of Guru Nanak's live could do it, but wouldn't something similar still appears?

And what would be the short term and long terms consequences for the sub-continent?
Would it impact much on social stratification, preventing an early rise of opposition against it?
Would it help significantly the late Moghol Empire?

Preventing it from appearing, short of butterflying Guru Nanak Dev Ji away or killing him in his childhood, would be virtually impossible. Eliminating Sikhism, on the other hand, would have been relatively easy, considering that it only survived the Mughals' concerted campaign of genocide by the skin of its teeth. Fleeing to the forests of the Sivalik Hills, the Sikhs were forced to fight a guerrilla war against the Mughals for their survival for roughly twenty years, between 1718 and 1738, and the number of surviving Sikhs is estimated to have fallen as low as 2000 individuals at this time.
 
For a very long time Sikhism was considered a sect of Hinduism. And during the era there were a number of religious movements in the Punjab; Kabir, for instance, contributed heavily to the religious diversity of the time.

So you could easily butterfly Sikhism away, and maybe no other sect or movement might take its place and be as popular; but there will certainly be a lot of contender for the title, from both Hinduism and Islam.

Plus Sikhism as we know it took a while to form, so there is a three hundred year period to look at; with certain changes, Sikhs would be remarkably different and unrecognizable compared to OTL.
 
The Bhakti movement was a Hindu religious movement of the medieval period that promoted the belief that salvation was attainable by everyone. The movement originated in Tamilnadu in the seventh century and spread northwards throughout India. The rejection of caste system and Brahminical rituals and belief in and devotion to one God were the features of the Bhakti movement.
During the 14th to 17th centuries Bhakti movement swept through the Central and Northern India. The teachers like Basaveshwara(12th century), Madhvacharya(1199-1278), Annamacharya, Tyagaraja etc. propagated Bhakti in the South, while sants like Ramananda(15th century), Ravidas, Surdas, Meerabai, Kabir, Tulsidas, Namdev, Gnyaneshwar, Tukaram, Vallabhacharya(1479-1531), Shrimanta Shankaradeva(1449-1568), Chaitanya Mahaprabhu(1486-1534), Guru Nanak(1469-1539), Swaminarayan(1781-1830) etc. spearheaded the movement in the North.
Many of these teachers founded their own schools of thought with large numbers of followers. Most of these developed to become the sects of Hinduism while Sikhism propagated by Guru Nanak alone separated to form a distinct religion. More than Guru Nanak himself it was under Guru Gobind Singh, the tenth and last Guru that Sikhism became a separate religion. It was the persecution and suppression by the Mughal rulers that forced the Sikhs to make their faith militant and fiercely independent.
 
I'm not sure I see the relevance. How could this movement prevents the appearance of Sikihism, as it existed while this religion still appeared?
 

SinghKing

Banned
I'm not sure I see the relevance. How could this movement prevents the appearance of Sikihism, as it existed while this religion still appeared?

An important thing to understand is that in India, there's historically been no differentiation between the legal, political concept of 'laws', and the religious concept of 'laws'. So, I suppose that in this instance, you could draw analogies between the Bhakti movement and 'Socialism', as well as between the Sikh faith and 'Communism'. In an ATL, if the political theology of Socialism had never existed- or indeed if the early Socialist movement had been more successful, and was perceived to have either already achieved, or be well along the way to achieving, most of its ideological goals- would Communism have still appeared?
 
Giving that Socialist and Communist ideas appeared roughly at the same time (one being only a varient of the former, rather than being created from), I'm not sure I understand better the Indian situation with this comparison, sorry.

Could you make a crude TL to illustrate this point? Possibly by underlining the consequences (that is after all, half of the OP :p)
 
I'm not sure I see the relevance. How could this movement prevents the appearance of Sikihism, as it existed while this religion still appeared?

It is not the case of preventing the appearance of Sikhism. What I wanted to point out was that Guru Nanak was just one among the many religious teachers, many of whom had founded their own schools of thought. And many of those movements have hundreds of thousands of followers even today. Still they are not counted as separate religions.
The same could have happened to Sikhism also. It also could have remained a cult or sect of Hinduism like the VeeraShaiva movement of Basaveshwara or Ekasarana Dharma of Srimanta Shankardeva or BrahmoSamaj or AryaSamaj. It was certain peculiar political rather than religious circumstances that paved the way for the development of a separate religion called Sikhism.
 
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Get it.
We talked a lot about how to butterfly Sikhism away : but not so much about the consequences. What would they be?
 
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