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വായന

04 December, 2018

An Indo-Pak faith corridor

BRP Bhaskar

After four barren years, a bright patch appeared in India-Pakistan relations last week with breaking of ground for a corridor across the international border to link two sacred spots of the Sikh community and allow pilgrims visa-free travel.

The six-kilometre corridor will connect Kartarpur Sahib gurudwara (shrine) in Narowal district in Pakistan’s Punjab province with Dera Baba Nanak gurdwara in Gurdaspur district in India’s Punjab state.

Kartarpur is where Guru Nanak (1469-1539), founder of Sikhism, spent his last years. His birthplace, marked by Nankana Sahib gurdwara, is also in Pakistan. Dera Baba Nanak, with three famous gurdwaras, is a town built in the Guru’s honour by his descendants.

Worldwide there is an estimated 27 million Sikhs, of whom 83 per cent live in India, 76 per cent in Punjab state, where they are in a majority.

After Partition, the bulk of Pakistan’s Sikhs moved to India as refugees or migrated to various Western countries. Currently its Sikh population is estimated at about 20,000 only. But it has a large number of Sikhism’s holy shrines. They are looked after by the government-appointed Pakistan Sikh Gurdwara Committee.

Sikh pilgrims from India visit Pakistani gurdwaras in groups on four occasions in a year: Baisakhi (spring festival), the martyrdom anniversary of Guru Arjan Dev, the fifth of Sikhism’s 10 gurus, the death anniversary of Sikh emperor Ranjit Singh and the birth anniversary of Guru Nanak.

The idea of a faith corridor was mooted by Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee when he undertook a celebrated bus ride from Amritsar to Pakistan in 1999.

Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan had invited a Congress Minister of Punjab, Navjot Singh Sidhu, who, like him, is a cricketer turned politician, to his swearing-in ceremony. There Army chief Gen Qamar Bajwa told him that foundation stone for the corridor would be laid soon. Overwhelmed, Sidhu, who is a Sikh, hugged the general.

When news of the hug reached India, Bharatiya Janata Party leaders branded Sidhu anti-national.

Early in his term Prime Minister Narendra Modi had attempted to cultivate good personal relations with his Pakistani counterpart, Nawas Sharif. However bilateral relations suffered with last-minute cancellation of scheduled talks on several occasions.

In 2014, official level talks to resume the peace process were called off after Pakistan High Commissioner Abdul Basit conferred with Kashmir’s Hurriyat leaders in New Delhi.

In 2016, scheduled talks were abandoned following an attack on the Pathankot air base by suspected Pakistan-based militants.

This year, a planned meeting of Foreign Ministers on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly session was cancelled following an incident in the Kashmir valley.

The BJP’s reaction to Sidhu’s hug and the government’s unpreparedness to make any gesture when elections are near, prevented India from turning over a new leaf, taking advantage of Pakistan’s Kartarpur Sahib corridor initiative.

Although no Central minister has been to Pakistan since Home Minister Rajnath Singh’s visit for the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation meeting in 2016, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj declined the invitation to attend the Kartarpur ceremony, citing prior commitments.

Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh, who belongs to the Congress, also declined the invitation. He gave two reasons: increasing truce violations in Kashmir and recent discovery of ISI-linked modules in his state.

Two Sikh ministers, Harsimrat Kaur Badal and Hardeep Singh Puri, represented the Indian government at the Kartarpur function. Sidhu attended on Imran Khan’s personal invitation.

Even as Imran Khan launched work on the corridor at the Pakistani end, Vice-President M Venkaiah Naidu inaugurated work at the Indian end, with no Pakistani guest at the function. 

Talking to Indian journalists who were in Pakistan to cover the Kartarpur function, Imran Khan said the militancy problem was something he had inherited. He added the civilian and military leadership in Pakistan agreed on the need to improve ties with India.

In an apparent response to his statement, Rajnath Singh offered Pakistan help to tackle the militancy problem. Overlooking the reasons cited by the government for cancellation of bilateral meetings, he said there had been no major terrorist act in India in the last four years.

With only a few months left for the parliamentary elections, it is too late for Modi to make any new move. The government to be formed after the elections, even if it is led by Modi, will find it necessary to resume talks. For, how long can the two countries, which journalist Kuldip Nayar referred to as “distant neighbours”, refuse to talk to each other? --Gulf Today, Sharjah, December 4, 2018.

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