Jamil Chughtai
On 26 November 2018, Indian Vice President, Venkaiah Naidu, inaugurated work on Kartarpur Sahib Corridor in Gurdaspur district of Indian Punjab. Responding positively, on 28 November 2018, the Prime Minister of Pakistan Imran Khan laid the foundation stone for Kartarpur corridor in Narowal district on Pakistani side of Punjab. Besides the Chief of Army Staff General Qamar Javed Bajwa, the event in Pakistan was also attended by two central ministers of India, Harsimrat Kaur Badal and Hardeep Singh Purim, a member of the Parliament from Amritsar, Gurjeet Singh Aujla and cricketer-turned-politician Navjot Singh Sidhu. The ground-breaking ceremony amassed huge media attention throughout the world.
Kartarpur Corridor is a proposed border passage between India and Pakistan, connecting the Sikh shrines of Dera Baba Nanak Sahib located in village Mann in Indian Punjab with Gurdwara Darbar Sahib Kartarpur in Punjab, Pakistan. Despite the fact that people on the Indian side of the border can physically see Kartarpur Gurdwara located 4.7 km inside Pakistan border, currently the pilgrims from India have to take a bus to Lahore to get to Kartarpur, which becomes 125 km journey. Keeping in view the long standing desire of Sikh community living across the border, Pakistan since long had an expressed intention to allow religious devotees from India a visa-free visit to the Gurdwara by building a corridor at Kartarpur. After its formal inauguration, it is now expected that the corridor will be completed before the 550th anniversary of Guru Nanak to be held in November 2019.
Opening of the Kartarpur Corridor is being seen as a traditional goodwill gesture on the part of Pakistan towards a next-door neighbour whose responses to such rapprochements in the past have invariably been discouraging. Putting the past experiences aside, Pakistan once again took initiative to attain normalcy after months of aggressive posturing due to ceasefire violations and killings of civilians along the Line of Control (LoC) by Indian border forces. After coming to power last year, PM Khan expressed his desire that he wanted better ties with New Delhi, and accordingly in September Pakistan officially offered India to have open talks on all fronts including the issue of terrorism. However, by yet again equating Pakistan with terrorism in general and holding it responsible for unrest in Indian Occupied Kashmir (IOK) in particular, New Delhi rejected Pakistan’s sincere proposal by saying that ‘terror and talks cannot go together’. Moreover, to defeat hopes for better relations in the days ahead, India flatly refused to attend SAARC summit in Islamabad as suggested by Pakistan.
In fact a lot had been said and done between Pakistan and India before the latter could be made to finally agree to open Kartarpur Corridor to facilitate her own Sikh community. Initially on observing procrastinations on the part of India, Pakistan’s Foreign Office expressed concerns that it “will not see any forward movement if India does not hold talks with Pakistan.” Months of back-channel diplomacy over opening of Kartarpur Corridor seemingly hit another snag when the Indian government openly declared that it would not reach out to Pakistan over the corridor issue. Nevertheless, a few months after rejecting Pakistan’s proposal, the Indian government suddenly approved the plan to open a visa-free corridor for Indian Sikh pilgrims to visit Gurdwara Kartarpur Sahib in Pakistan. It is believed that this abrupt change of mind on the Corridor is not aimed at beginning a new phase of cooperation with Pakistan. Rather it was just a development seeking appeasement of domestic audience as denying the Sikh community an opportunity to mark Guru Nanak’s 550th birth anniversary when Pakistan is ready to open the corridor would only alienate millions of Sikhs living in India. Moreover, the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) hoped that it will not only weaken the Indian National Congress’s foothold in Punjab but also make significant electoral gains in the province during next general election scheduled to be held in May 2019.
Whereas it is highly unlikely that BJP government would want to use this normalization opportunity to open dialogue with Pakistan on other issues, it may pretty well escalate its war of words against Islamabad to win greater political support on way to elections. Incongruous viewpoints coming out from power corridors of India with respect to Kartarpur passage, however, do not bode well. While PM Modi compared the decision of going ahead with the corridor to fall of the Berlin Wall and hoped that the project may help in easing tensions between the two countries, it was Indian Army Chief Bipin Rawat this time who remarked the same day that Kartarpur should be viewed in “isolation” and not linked to anything else, adding that it was a unilateral decision. More apathetic were the comments from India’s Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj as ‘she sees the positive developments regarding the Kartarpur Corridor as separate from the wider bilateral talks between the two countries’.
The Kartarpur Corridor is being termed as a small initiative to create general goodwill between the two states, and if succeeded it would also help create the requisite momentum to identify and iron out other problematic issues in the days ahead. Pakistan keeps a long record of showing inclinations to open dialogues with India on strategic issues previously as well, yet New Delhi had hardly been forthcoming in her reciprocations. One surely should not expect much this time as well; at least till the ongoing election frenzy is over for the incumbent BJP government. Hence, in near future, Pakistan for its part is also not likely to unilaterally change its policy on issues concerning strategic and security implications for the country.
Irrespective of political diversities, the Kartarpur Corridor will nonetheless be appreciated equivocally by Sikh community on both sides of the fence. In the face of strong religious bifurcations in the region in general and particularly in India, the Corridor has at least provided a platform of consensus to help create more such opportunities for Indo-Pak rapprochements in coming days. However, this sincere endeavour bears potential to produce positive dividends only in an environment where disruptive elements, such as Rashtirya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), are not afforded free space to mess with this project as well – the way they did with Samjhota Train and Delhi–Lahore Bus initiatives in the past.
