Pakistan Opens Visa-Free Border Crossing for Indian Sikh Pilgrims
US Media International - USMI
The 4.1-kilometer cross-border corridor, featuring fenced-off sides and leading straight to the shrine in Pakistani town of Kartarpur in Punjab province. Known as the Gurdwara Darbar Sahib, the temple is believed to have been built on the site where the founder of Sikhism, Guru Nanak, spent last 18 years of his life before he died there in the 16th century. Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan inaugurated the border corridor, just in time for the 550th anniversary of Guru Nanak's birth on November 12. “I congratulate you and I am happy to be with you today to see that for the first time people can now come from India [through the corridor] to pay the homage,” Khan told thousands of Sikh devotees inside the newly built sprawling complex around the temple.
The minority Sikh community in India has demanded access to the shrine for decades. But bilateral tensions blocked progress until last year when Pakistan itself offered to open the Kartarpur crossing.
A large number of devotees from countries such as Canada, Australia and Britain also come to Kartarpur through regular entry points and airports in Pakistan to attend the event. Foreign diplomats based in Islamabad also were flown to Kartarpur to witness the inaugural ceremony.
Saturday was the first time since 1947 — when British India was divided into the two separate states of India and Pakistan — that Indian Sikh devotees were able to cross the border and undertake a visa-free visit to the shrine.
Until now, pilgrims had to go through a drawn-out visa process, often hampered by mutual tensions, and undertake a long journey through Pakistan to reach the temple.
