Sikhism = Heresy?

[Fishman786]

The manual says that Sikhs are both a heresy of Sunni Islam and Hinduism, which is the exact same as in EUIII, and something I thought would be changed. Sikhism is completely and utterly different to Islam (no recognition of Abrahamic prophets or Muhammad for example) so it doesn't make sense as an offshoot of Sunni. And Sikhism is no more an offshoot of Hinduism than Buddhism is.

The Sikh faith is a separate religion in its own right, and would make most sense in EUIII as a late-game religion that emerges through a small reformation-type event in northern India. Just randomly-generated heretic rebels does not make sense for the beginning of the 5th largest world religion, and whilst Sikh imperial power reached its height during the Vicky II era, in the 18th century the Sikh confederacy was still a force to be reckoned with. After the decline of the Mughals, the Afghans tried to move into Punjab to replace them, and the repulsion of the Afghan empire from India was more or less entirely due to the Sikhs. So it's not as if Sikhism is some minor irrelevant sect.

Basically I don't really understand why Sikhism isn't in the game, apart from some heretic rebel names. There's a whole list of reasons:
Gameplay: A reformation-type event chain in India would be cool, it would definitely mix things up. Hindus and Muslims are fighting, the Europeans are poking their noses into things deeper and deeper, and then suddenly a fourth faction shows up who don't really want anything to do with the others. Will they ally with the Europeans to guarantee their independence (as happened historically), or will they join forces with one of the other religions and potentially tip the balance against the colonists?
It might also be unique gameplay-wise to have a chance at playing as a country with very few provinces of its own religion. Even in the 20th century (up until the 1947 genocides) Sikhism never really became the majority religion in any EUIV province, and has always been particularly vulnerable the threat of being assimilated into Hinduism and the threat from Christian missionaries. A very different sort of game from the usual 'conquer province, convert religion, assimilate culture' path you get in Europe.

History: Obviously the Sikh Empire (known in EUIII as Punjab) had Sikhism as its state religion of course. But before that throughout the 18th century there were Sikh states in the Punjab region, who played a crucial role in founding the cities and polities that would become a part of British India later on. These states (the Misls) formed a unique military democracy, a coalition of small republics that would band together to fight off external threats. These threats included first the Mughals (who were mainly a problem before the Misls actually), then the Persians, and finally the Afghans. And there was also Banda Singh Bahadur's uprising in the early 18th century, which was in essence a Sikh-led peasant revolt against the feudal system. Basically, the EUIV time period represents the formative period of one of the most important 19th century actors in India.

Recognisability: Everyone knows about the Sikh religion or at least knows what a Sikh looks like, we are one of the main world religions. In Vicky II the Sikh Empire is one of the larger and more popular unciv countries for people who want a challenge, so it's quite recognisable within Paradox games as well. Paradox has added far less recognisable peoples and cultures into their games before (eg Pechenegs, Nogai Horde, Ulm), so it's not as if this is some sort of obscure thing that will confuse everybody.


In the diaries the developers said that they would be improving India considerably, and I really think Sikhism is a necessary part of making a believable early modern India. It was said that the developers wanted to show the different ways that Hinduism and Islam interacted in the subcontinent interacted, but Sikhism is a really important part of those interactions, and it's a shame that for all intents and purposes the religion doesn't exist. Maybe in EUIV the heretics now work as they did in CK2, functioning as semi-independent religions on their own, which would make sort of sense (but I would still hope for an expansion to flesh it out), but if it is still like EUIII where heretics are just nuisance rebel bands with random names it's quite disappointing.

 

[unmerged(46341)]

Its true, the east needs some love.

 

[Plasma Doctor]

I support the idea overall, though probably won't be something we'll see until at least until an expansion of EU4. Perhaps an improvement of the rest of the world type stuff like Divine Wind was for EU3?

 

[VolitionNewlove]

It's the same reason we don't see Ibadi Muslims or Miaphysite Christians and see generic "animists" and "shamanists." What that reason is, however, I really don't know... :sad:

 

[Akuseru]

Paradox has never really seemed to care much about these sorts of things in EU if they don't relate to Europe. So unless there's an expansion pack dealing with the area specifically, good luck.


If they were are completely unrelated like you say (I believe you, I'm just not well versed / knowledgeable in the slightest on the subject), then it could probably be taken as offensive by some people to be how it is in game. It's a shame.

 

[Dafool]

Sadly religion hasn't changed much. The groupings are still odd, some religions are still missing, and some of the religious representation is fictional. Given how often these issues were brought up and modded in EU3, I'm a little surprised that the devs chose to copy and paste everything over to EU4 without any improvements. I'm sure someone is going to suggest that PDS can fix this with DLC or that modders can take care of it, but personally I don't think it's a good policy to put basic historical representation on the back burner.

 

[skynet464]

I think it sort of makes sense for it to be a Sunni Islam and Hinduism heresy, but i do agree it could use some love.

 

[Inkshootr]

I agree that it shouldn't be considered a Hindu or (God forbid) Muslim heresy, because Hinduism, as a mostly unorganized, pseudo-pantheistic religion, doesn't even really have a concept of "heresy" or "infidels" in the way that the Abrahamic religions do.

That said, I'm not sure how they would implement the formation of a new religion that isn't an offshoot of an existing religion. Protestantism, for instance, emerges from Catholicism, but it's not at all analogous to the emergence of the Sikhs.

 

[Jake Dust]

Even in the 20th century (up until the 1947 genocides) Sikhism never really became the majority religion in any EUIV province

You answered your own question. There's no use in adding a religion which can't be represented in the game, and that's why there are no Sikhs, no Jews, no Druzes, no Copts, no Zoroastrians, no Jains, etc, etc, etc.

 

[VolitionNewlove]

You answered your own question. There's no use in adding a religion which can't be represented in the game, and that's why there are no Sikhs, no Jews, no Druzes, no Copts, no Zoroastrians, no Jains, etc, etc, etc.

It was the state religion of Panjab/Punjab historically, though.

Furthermore, even if it cannot be represented because nobody can be bothered to draw a religion thumbnail for it, surely it shouldn't feature as a Heresey of Sunni Islam... This being what is today (depending on criteria) the fifth or sixth most popular religion in the world today, not something which can be simply called a heresey.

 

[Jake Dust]

It was the state religion of Panjab/Punjab historically, though.

For the last twenty years of the game, and even then it wasn't the majority religion of the province. So we would have one country, with two provinces, both of them of a different religion. Quite unfeasible in gameplay matters right now (but it is very easy to mod, if you want to), unfortunately, but maybe it would be more reasonable if one day they were to add minority religions to provinces.

Furthermore, even if it cannot be represented because nobody can be bothered to draw a religion thumbnail for it, surely it shouldn't feature as a Heresey of Sunni Islam... This being what is today (depending on criteria) the fifth or sixth most popular religion in the world today, not something which can be simply called a heresey.

Well, Protestant are about 800 million people, and they are heretics
(technically "separated brethren" since Vatican II, but that kinda ruins the argument)

 

[VolitionNewlove]

For the last twenty years of the game, and even then it wasn't the majority religion of the province. So we would have one country, with two provinces, both of them of a different religion. Quite unfeasible in gameplay matters right now (but it is very easy to mod, if you want to), unfortunately, but maybe it would be more reasonable if one day they were to add minority religions to provinces.

Is there any reason, though, as to why it would be hard to add in to the game? Do people honestly get confused by the existance of multiple religions?

Well, Protestant are about 800 million people, and they are heretics
(technically "separated brethren" since Vatican II, but that kinda ruins the argument)

Umm... I'm sure Protestants are already in the game, however, not simply as a type of heretic rebel.

Especially as a religion to which it has no relation other than it coming from region with a large Sunni population...

 

[jye42]

The historical origions of a religion are oftern quite different than the origions according to the cannon and dogma of that same religion. That Sikhism is a Heresy of Islam & Hinduism is not an oversite infact it is very astute. However, such a historical representation of Sikhism is at odds with the origions according to Sikh praticioners.
I don't want to upset anyone, by picking out this religion in paticular so I will compare and contrast with reference to abrahamic religions.

Sikhism emerged from a cultural melting pot which including both Islam and Hinduism and so it contains elements of each in it's beliefs over time it came into it's own but in its early beginings Sikhism had many roots in both. Making it a break away from the cannon (a Herecy) as oposed to it's own distinct religion (Hethan). Later, it became a religion of its own but in this early time period it makes sence for it to be a Herecy.

Christianity also emerged from a cultural melting pot including Gnostic, Judaic & Buddhist ideas (Buddhst monestaries were in palastine at the time of christ and as far west as egypt.) From this melting pot of ideas Christianity emerges. In its early states it too could be easily considered a Judaic or Gnostic Herecy but by the time of EU4 it was a full blown religion in its own right.

Nearly every religion begins as a Herecy of another. Only time allows the distinctiveness to emerge so that it becomes a new religion in it's own right. Becuase of the time peroid in which the game is set such a minority religion should be represented by a Herecy.

 

[DanubianCossak]

Its probably not in game because its a territorially small religion. At best you would have what? A single or 2 counties (unless im missing something, in which case i apologize), and that doesnt work out well gameplay wise. In EU3 if you were in a separate religious group you couldnt make royal marriages (so no legitimacy increase) and alliances (for most of the game). Its just like Judaism and other religions like that, which made majority only in small areas, without even having proper tags attached to them, once converted, they would never come back, so are mostly waste of graphics and code.

There are always mods and stuff.

One thing i think could be helpful for your cause: maps. If you have any maps and stuff showing where Sikhs were majority, and specially how this population changed through time, post them. That would help immensely.

 

[Fishman786]

If they were are completely unrelated like you say (I believe you, I'm just not well versed / knowledgeable in the slightest on the subject), then it could probably be taken as offensive by some people to be how it is in game. It's a shame.

It depends. As it stands I doubt it's going to be much of a problem. If Sikhism were solely a Hindu heresy or ended up being labelled as a form of Hinduism somehow, that's getting into the language of the Indian extreme right and would definitely make some people angry, the relationship between Sikhism and Hinduism has been intensely politicised since the 1970s at least.

You answered your own question. There's no use in adding a religion which can't be represented in the game, and that's why there are no Sikhs, no Jews, no Druzes, no Copts, no Zoroastrians, no Jains, etc, etc, etc.

Most of those religions had no states which followed their religion either and limited political power. Even before the creation of an actual unified Sikh state which as correctly stated in the thread includes only the last couple of decades of the game, there were multiple military republics that followed Sikhism. These were strong enough to evict the Afghan Empire of Ahmad Shah Abdali from India (as I said), and then conquer Delhi itself from the Mughals.

And from gameplay terms it's interesting. Imagine playing as a country with only one province of its own religion, and no option to really spread it to the rest. You get a religious war CB on your neighbours, but you also need to go down the 'tolerance' idea route all the way if you are to avoid rebellion, whilst keeping some military points (and army units) reserved in case that doesn't work.

The historical origions of a religion are oftern quite different than the origions according to the cannon and dogma of that same religion. That Sikhism is a Heresy of Islam & Hinduism is not an oversite infact it is very astute. However, such a historical representation of Sikhism is at odds with the origions according to Sikh praticioners.
I don't want to upset anyone, by picking out this religion in paticular so I will compare and contrast with reference to abrahamic religions.

Sikhism emerged from a cultural melting pot which including both Islam and Hinduism and so it contains elements of each in it's beliefs over time it came into it's own but in its early beginings Sikhism had many roots in both. Making it a break away from the cannon (a Herecy) as oposed to it's own distinct religion (Hethan). Later, it became a religion of its own but in this early time period it makes sence for it to be a Herecy.

Christianity also emerged from a cultural melting pot including Gnostic, Judaic & Buddhist ideas (Buddhst monestaries were in palastine at the time of christ and as far west as egypt.) From this melting pot of ideas Christianity emerges. In its early states it too could be easily considered a Judaic or Gnostic Herecy but by the time of EU4 it was a full blown religion in its own right.

Nearly every religion begins as a Herecy of another. Only time allows the distinctiveness to emerge so that it becomes a new religion in it's own right. Becuase of the time peroid in which the game is set such a minority religion should be represented by a Herecy.

Pre-1699 you could represent Sikhs as randomly-generated heretic rebels and leave it at that, but with the creation of the Khalsa and the completion of the religion by Guru Gobind Singh ji it became a separate faith in its own right. The time you describe when Sikhism was forming and becoming a new religion rather than a philosophical system was from 1469 to 1708, with the birth of the Khalsa in 1699 generally regarded as the watershed by Sikhs.

 

[Jia Xu]

This isn't exactly shocking. This topic came up in the religion developer diary months ago and the developers just completely avoided the subject, telling us that Sikhism wasn't going to be in the game. I'm willing to assume that they've saved it for DLC.

 

[DanubianCossak]

You get a religious war CB on your neighbours, but you also need to go down the 'tolerance' idea route all the way if you are to avoid rebellion, whilst keeping some military points (and army units) reserved in case that doesn't work.

This is EU3 code (under assumption it will be carried over to EU4):

Religious Liberation: only if target country has provinces of your religious group.

	prerequisites = {
		NOT = { religion_group = christian } # Christians and Muslims get Holy War instead
		NOT = { religion_group = muslim }
		NOT = { religion_group = THIS }
		religion_group_claim = THIS
		OR = {
			government = imperial_government
			defender_of_faith = yes
			neighbour = THIS
			idea = deus_vult # Actually "Unam Sanctam"
			idea = divine_supremacy
		}
	}

	allowed_provinces = {
		religion_group = THIS
	}

Holy War: only available to Muslims and Christians.

	prerequisites = {
		OR = {
			religion_group = christian
			religion_group = muslim
		}
		NOT = { religion_group = THIS }
		OR = {
			government = imperial_government
			defender_of_faith = yes
			neighbour = THIS
			AND = {
				THIS = { is_crusade_target = yes }
				religion = catholic
			}
			idea = deus_vult # Actually "Unam Sanctam"
			idea = divine_supremacy
		}
		NOT = { year = 1650 }
	}

So basically youd get no religious CBs.

 

[Plasma Doctor]

I'd think they'd expand the Holy War CB, since it's likely Reformed Pagans and Zoroastrians get it, especially likely Zoroastrians since they use it heavily in game.

 

[Fishman786]

Its probably not in game because its a territorially small religion. At best you would have what? A single or 2 counties (unless im missing something, in which case i apologize), and that doesnt work out well gameplay wise. In EU3 if you were in a separate religious group you couldnt make royal marriages (so no legitimacy increase) and alliances (for most of the game). Its just like Judaism and other religions like that, which made majority only in small areas, without even having proper tags attached to them, once converted, they would never come back, so are mostly waste of graphics and code.

There are always mods and stuff.

One thing i think could be helpful for your cause: maps. If you have any maps and stuff showing where Sikhs were majority, and specially how this population changed through time, post them. That would help immensely.

In my mod (which I abandoned due to time constraints and the announcement of EUIV) I planned to implement this system for Sikhism:
1. From the start of the 15th century up until the start of the 18th, the country in control of the Punjab region would get a small number of events related to Sikhism, flavour events really talking about things like the founding of Amritsar, the life of Guru Hargobind ji etc. This would end in 1699 with the birth of the Khalsa.

2. Then in the the first decades of the 18th century there's a chance of an event in which the religion of a random province in Punjab changes to Sikhism and becomes independent under the PUN tag. This event starts off all the spread of Sikhism related events and sort of represents Banda Singh Bahadur's revolt, in which large numbers of peasants converted to Sikhism and destroyed the city of Sirhind in real history. Obviously my intention was to randomise things a bit so the player can't just predict what's going to happen and park an army in the right places. Anyway, this OPM appears and declares war on you, and although it's easy to crush it the cork is taken out the bottle now and Sikhism has appeared.

3. After this there's a set of events about the spread of Sikhism. There's a chance of Sikhs forming a colony in any province in Punjab (a province modifier) and if you choose to tolerate its existence the province might eventually convert to the religion properly. If you don't tolerate it though there's a chance of a Sikh Misl (a military encampment) forming in the province instead, which increases revolt risk and damages tax income and manpower. The rebels spawned would seek the independence of the PUN tag.

4. The PUN tag itself would probably appear near the end of the game so what happens with that doesn't really matter much. There was going to be an option for the Empire ruling Punjab to convert to Sikhism instead of facing the revolts though (a non-historical option unlikely to be used by the AI but more likely for those with tolerant ideas and the din-e-Illahi modifier) and the PUN tag could be formed that way instead.


However, in my mod missionaries in south Asia were planned to behave rather differently, so in Vanilla EUIII yes there would be a problem with the Sikh religion being converted out of existence by them straight away. But I had hoped Paradox would have dealt with the excessive effectiveness of missionaries and sorted out religion in South Asia, since they had said that India would be more complex this time around.

 

[Ograv]

Just for the people arguing it's not a heresy of this or that: EUIV won't use the CK2 religious system. I might be wrong here, but in EU3 and, I strongly believe EU4, there will be religious groups (christianity, islam, pagans, eastern) with religions: Protestant, Catholic, Reformed and Orthodox as Christian religions, and Sunni, Shiites, Confucianism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Shamanism, etc. in other groups. In CK2 you had religions with heresies (Catholic with Cathars, etc.), this is not the case in EU4 - "heresies" are considered different religions in the same religious group. And for simplicity's sake, eastern religions are grouped. So if Sikhism were to be added, it would be a seperate eastern religion. Not more of a heresy than Hinduism is to Buddhism. It'd be cool with a Magna Mundi-like system representing religious minorities, but that'll have be for a mod. Sikhism's founder wasn't even born in 1444, which I believe is one reason it's not added (more weight on the 1444 bookmark), and another would be it's a small religion with regional significance in the late game at best. I'm all for more flavour but I understand why Sikhs, and other smaller religions, were omitted.

Honestly (yes I'm going there - sorry) I believe a more fleshed out religious system would be prime material for DLC. It's certainly way too late to change it at this point. It's a little simplistic as it is but it does work fairly well.