New Delhi: India remained undecided on whether or not it would allow pilgrims to use the Kartarpur Corridor, even though Pakistan has already announced that it will welcome Sikh pilgrims looking visiting their holy sites in the country.
According reports in the Indian media, an official in India’s Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) said that the corridor had not been opened because of the coronavirus, which has spread quickly in India, making it the second worst affected country in the world. Because of this, the movement of pilgrims through this corridor is considered high risk.
“We remain in touch with all concerned authorities, including ministries of home affairs and health and family welfare. A decision on reopening of the corridor would be taken in accordance with the COVID-19 protocol and easing of restrictions,” MEA Spokesperson Anurag Srivastava said.
He also asked Islamabad to complete the construction of a bridge on its side of the border.
Pakistan, which has seen a recent downturn the upsurge of coronavirus cases, however, has said pilgrims are welcome. A notification issued by the Pakistani Ministry of Religious Affairs on Friday had stated that after reviewing an overall improvement in the COVID-19 situation in Pakistan, it had been decided to reopen the Gurdwara Kartarpur Sahib Corridor with immediate effect.
Indian visitors are welcome to visit daily from dawn to dusk as per a bilateral agreement made in 2019 between India and Pakistan. They have, however, been requested to comply with precautionary measures for COVID-19.
Local visitors will also be able to visit from dawn to dusk every day, subject to the observance of COVID-19 safety protocols.
The reopening of the corridor is a significant step, both diplomatically and in the scale back from the pandemic lockdown, since Pakistan had closed Kartarpur and the Gurdwara to foreign visitors way back in March, when the country first began reporting coronavirus cases.
It was reopened briefly in June to commemorate Maharaja Ranjit Singh’s death anniversary, but India rejected Pakistan’s offer and refused to open the corridor on its side.
Kartarpur is one of the holiest sites in the Sikh tradition. The first Guru of Sikhism, Baba Guru Nanak Sahib, had spent the last 18 years of his life in Kartarpur, a town located in Punjab province’s Narowal district. For millions of Sikhs around the world, it is one of their holiest places.
When Pakistan was carved out of colonial India at independence from Britain in 1947, Kartarpur ended up on the western side of the border — though most of the region’s Sikhs remained on the other side. For them, Kartarpur Sahib is tantalisingly close — just four kilometres inside Pakistan; so near that Indian Sikhs have been known to stand on the other side and simply gaze across the divide at the site.
Decades of enmity between India and Pakistan left extreme restrictions on their ability to visit the site, until November 10, 2019, when Prime Minister Imran Khan formally inaugurated the corridor.
