Kartarpur corridor : “Kisne socha that ki Berlin ki deewar gir sakti hai. Shayad Guru Nanak Devji ke aashirwad se Kartarpur ka corridor sirf corridor nahi, jan-jan ko jodne ka bahut of pilgrims’ progress bada kaaran ban sakta hai (Who thought the Berlin Wall would fall. May be, with the blessings of Guru Nanak Devji, Kartarpur corridor will not only be a corridor but can be a reason to bring people together,” Modi said Friday at a function to mark the birth anniversary of Guru Nanak Dev at the New Delhi home of Union Minister Harsimrat Kaur.
Opinion
28/11/2018
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SUB : Kartarpur corridor : “Kisne socha that ki Berlin ki deewar gir sakti hai. Shayad Guru Nanak Devji ke aashirwad se Kartarpur ka corridor sirf corridor nahi, jan-jan ko jodne ka bahut of pilgrims’ progress bada kaaran ban sakta hai (Who thought the Berlin Wall would fall. May be, with the blessings of Guru Nanak Devji, Kartarpur corridor will not only be a corridor but can be a reason to bring people together,” Modi said Friday at a function to mark the birth anniversary of Guru Nanak Dev at the New Delhi home of Union Minister Harsimrat Kaur.
REF : Kartarpur corridor: Citing Berlin Wall, PM Narendra Modi holds out promise of pilgrims’ progress : THE INDIAN EXPRESS
*"Prime Minister Narendra Modi invoked the fall of the Berlin Wall to underline the potential transformative nature of the diplomatic move." :
Prime Minister Narendra Modi during a function on the occasion of the 550th birth anniversary of Guru Nanak. (PTI photo)
A day after Pakistan and India announced they would develop a pilgrim corridor, on both sides of the border, to Gurdwara Darbar Sahib in Kartarpur, Prime Minister Narendra Modi invoked the fall of the Berlin Wall to underline the potential transformative nature of the diplomatic move.
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In poll season, a bold push for a thaw :
The Prime Minister’s Berlin Wall-Kartarpur remark is one of his strongest overtures to Pakistan. More so when it comes hours after the MEA red-flagged the alleged Pakistan role in pro-Khalistan terror and two days before the 10th anniversary of the 26/11 Mumbai attacks. Since the PM’s surprise visit to Lahore in December 2015, the engagement with Pakistan has been in freeze. Evidently, as it enters the election season, the government hopes to see a thaw in ties.
Significantly, the Prime Minister made these remarks after the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) accused Islamabad of harassing Indian diplomats and denying them access to Indian pilgrims visiting gurdwaras Nankana Sahib and Sacha Sauda Sahib in Pakistan. Lodging a strong protest and expressing “grave concern”, the MEA accused Pakistan of promoting “secessionist tendencies” and produced photographs and videos of pro-Khalistan posters at these gurdwaras. South Block sources said these were shared as evidence with the Pakistan High Commission and officials of the Foreign Ministry.
One of the photographs shows Pakistan SGPC general secretary Gopal Singh Chawla, who is said to have met Lashkar-e-Taiba chief Hafiz Saeed, preventing Indian diplomats from meeting pilgrims at Nankana Sahib — The Indian Express reported Friday that Indian diplomats were being prevented from meeting Indian pilgrims at Nankana Sahib. “An Indian consular team was stopped by Pakistani security officials for the third consecutive time today at Nankana Sahib. They were stopped from performing their diplomatic duties, even harassed,” sources said. On the other hand, India, sources said, allowed a team of the Pakistan High Commission well as their High Commissioner to visit and meet Pakistani pilgrims headed to Piran Kaliyar Sharif, the dargah of Sufi saint Alauddin Ali Ahmed Sabir Kalyari near Haridwar.
While on the one side, Pakistan is trying to show its human face by allowing Indian pilgrims, on the other side it is promoting secessionist tendencies in India. It is openly inciting communal harmony and secessionist tendencies as can be seen from the number of posters, statements and procession with Khalistan flags today at Nankana Sahib,” sources said.
On Thursday, Islamabad responded within hours to a New Delhi request for a corridor to Kartarpur Sahib, allowing Sikh pilgrims to visit the shrine, the final resting place of Guru Nanak Dev. This was being read as the first signs of a thaw in India-Pakistan relations that plummeted to a new low two months ago when a meeting of Foreign Ministers was cancelled and positions hardened on both sides.
The MEA, lodging a “strong protest” with the Pakistan government, said that “despite having been granted prior travel permission by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Pakistan, Consular officials of the High Commission of India in Islamabad were harassed and denied access on November 21 and 22 at Gurudwara Nankana Sahib and Gurudwara Sacha Sauda to Indian pilgrims visiting Pakistan under the bilateral protocol”.
“As a result of such harassment, they were compelled to return to Islamabad without performing their diplomatic and consular duties vis-a-vis Indian pilgrims,” the MEA said in a statement. “We have also expressed grave concern at the reports of attempts being made during the ongoing visit of the Indian pilgrims to Pakistan, to incite communal disharmony and intolerance and promote secessionist tendencies with the objective of undermining India’s sovereignty and territorial integrity,” it said, referring to posters of a “Sikh referendum in 2020” at the gurdwaras in Pakistan.
PM Modi on kartarpur corridor for Sikh pilgrims’ in to visit Gurdwara Darbar Sahib Pakistan
Prime Minister Narendra Modi invoked the fall of the Berlin Wall to underline the potential transformative nature of the diplomatic move. (PTI Photo)
It said Pakistan has been called upon to take all measures to “not allow its territory to be used for any hostile propaganda and support for secessionist tendencies” against India in keeping with the commitments made under the Simla Agreement, 1972 and endorsed in the Lahore Declaration, 1999.
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*2. Kartarpur corridor: How India and Pakistan came on board -
India approves development of corridor, Pakistan responds that it has already decided to open it. What were the dynamics at play?
The visa-free corridor for Sikhs from India to Pakistan’s Kartarpur Sahib, revered as the place where Guru Nanak is said to have spent his final days and where he breathed his last, seems to have become possible not through an agreement between India and Pakistan, but with one side deciding not to oppose what the other had decided. Instead both are actively, and competitively, claiming ownership of a move that is a big leap forward for people-to-people relations.
On Thursday, hours after the Union Cabinet approved development of the Kartarpur corridor from Dera Baba Nanak village in Gurdaspur to Gurdwara Darbar Sahib Kartarpur in Pakistan, the Pakistan government responded that it has decided to open the corridor. The length of the corridor is about 4 km, 2 km on either side of the international border.
India’s announcement that it would develop a corridor up to the international border was timed with the start of 550th birth anniversary year of Guru Nanak, from Friday. The government also asked Pakistan “to recognise the sentiments of the Sikh community and to develop a corridor with suitable facilities in its territory from the International Border to Gurudwara Kartapur Sahib to facilitate easier access and smooth passage of India pilgrims through the year”.
Within minutes of the Cabinet decision being announced, Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi tweeted that the Pakistan government “has already conveyed to India its decision to open Kartarpur Corridor for Baba Guru Nanak’s 550th birth anniversary”, and that Prime Minister Imran Khan would do a groundbreaking ceremony for the corridor on November 28. He also welcomed “the Sikh community to Pakistan for the auspicious occasion”.
Later, from the Indian side came the announcement that President Ram Nath Kovind and Chief Minister Amarinder Singh will lay the foundation stone for the proposed corridor two days earlier, on November 26.
Whether the announcements were a coordinated two-step by the two countries, despite the big chill in their relationship, is unclear. If that is the case, it would point to a deep, ongoing back-channel process. But what is apparent is that India decided to get on board the initiative because it did not want to be upstaged by Pakistan, which proposed it first. India could not be seen denying its Sikh community what Pakistan was ready to roll out for it.
From the time Punjab minister Navjot Sidhu returned from Imran Khan’s swearing in ceremony to report that Pakistan Army chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa had told him that Pakistan was going to open the corridor for the occasion of the 550th birth anniversary, the matter had set a cat among the pigeons on the Indian side.
In Punjab, the Chief Minister lambasted his Cabinet colleague for not following protocol on bilateral matters, and quickly urged the Centre to “take up the Kartarpur issue with Pakistan”, a demand he reiterated several times over the last three months. Within a week of Sidhu’s return, the government also moved a resolution in the Punjab Assembly, adopted unanimously, seeking an uninterrupted corridor from Dera Baba Nanak to Kartarpur Sahib.
At the Centre, Minister of External Affairs Sushma Swaraj ticked off Sidhu for “politicising” the issue. The BJP’s ally in Punjab, the Shiromani Akali Dal, also pitched in against Sidhu, with Union Minister Harsimrat Kaur Badal accusing him of being a “puppet” of Pakistan.
Still, the matter likely would have come up at the planned meeting of the two foreign ministers in New York on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in September, had the meeting not been scratched by India a day after it was announced. At the time, Pakistan Information Minister Fawad Chaudhary told The Indian Express that Pakistan had finalised plans for the corridor and hope to finalise it during the Qureshi-Swaraj meeting.
With Pakistan moving ahead on its plan, it appears that India had no choice but to get into the act, despite misgivings in the security establishment that the Kartarpur corridor may be another attempt by Pakistan to woo the Sikh community, aimed eventually at creating unrest in Punjab.
That the announcement should follow a day after Amarinder blamed Pakistan and the ISI for the grenade attack on a Nirankari gathering near Amritsar is telling of the dynamics, domestic and foreign, at play here.
Pilgrimages between India and Pakistan are governed by the 1974 Protocol on Visits to Religious Shrines, which includes a list of shrines in Pakistan and India open for visitors from the other country, and for which visas are required. The Kartarpur Corridor, which will provide visa-free access from India to the shrine located 2 km inside Pakistan in Narowal when it becomes ready on both sides within a few months, may need a separate treaty.
For now, it is too early to say if the Kartarpur Corridor will lead to an all-round thaw in relations for the two countries to take up other issues through a dialogue, especially in an election year for India. But some ripples from the move are likely to be felt, especially by the people on both sides of Punjab, and may lead to the demand for other people-to-people initiatives.
*3. What is Sikh pilgrim corridor to Pakistan —(With Kamaldeep Singh Brar in Amritsar) -
The “corridor” would bring Pak infrastructure right up to the Indian border. Over the past year, gurdwaras in Pakistan have been used for a pro-Khalistan campaign.
Punjab minister Navjot Singh Sidhu has claimed that Pakistan Army chief Gen Qamar Javed Bajwa has told him that Islamabad would open a corridor to Gurdwara Darbar Sahib at Kartarpur in Pakistan’s Narowal district on the 550th birth anniversary of Guru Nanak next year. The gurdwara at Kartarpur stands at the site of the final resting place of the first Sikh Guru, just across the border from Dera Baba Nanak in Gurdaspur district. Former Union Minister M S Gill told The Indian Express that the offer was a “huge signal” that New Delhi should welcome.
The shrine :-
The gurdwara in Kartarpur stands on the bank of the Ravi, about 120 km northeast of Lahore. It was here that Guru Nanak assembled a Sikh community and lived for 18 years until his death in 1539. The shrine is visible from the Indian side, as Pakistani authorities generally trim the elephant grass that would otherwise obstruct the view. Indian Sikhs gather in large numbers for darshan from the Indian side, and binoculars are installed at Gurdwara Dera Baba Nanak.
The pilgrims :-
The gurdwara was opened to pilgrims after repairs and restoration in 1999, and Sikh jathas have been visiting the shrine regularly ever since. This was one of the outcomes of the historic bus trip to Lahore by Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee in February 1999, and there are no restrictions on visiting Gurdwara Kartarpur Sahib once a pilgrim has entered Pakistan on a valid visa. Sikh jathas from India travel to Pakistan on four occasions every year — for Baisakhi, the martyrdom day of Guru Arjan Dev, the death anniversary of Maharaja Ranjit Singh, and the birthday of Guru Nanak Dev. These Indian pilgrims are given access to all gurdwaras in Pakistan.
Corridor demand :-
There have long been demands from the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee and political leaders to build a “corridor” flanked by barbed wire to allow pilgrims to cross over into Pakistan to visit the Kartarpur Sahib shrine, and return the same day. A bridge will need to be constructed over the Ravi, and there shall be no need for passports or visas. Most recently, the demand was placed before a Parliamentary Standing Committee that visited Dera Baba Nanak last year.
Complex issue :-
The “corridor” would bring Pak infrastructure right up to the Indian border. Over the past year, gurdwaras in Pakistan have been used for a pro-Khalistan campaign. Earlier this year, a gurdwara displayed posters and distributed pamphlets for the so-called “Sikh Referendum 2020”, and Pakistan denied permission to the Indian envoy and diplomats to visit it. Pakistan’s intent also remains suspect, and Indian officials are wary of the corridor being misused by both state and non-state actors in that country.
JAIHIND
VANDE MATARAM
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