Kartarpur (Pakistan): The Kartarpur Corridor, leading to Gurdwara Darbar Sahib in Pakistan, where Sikhism’s founder Guru Nanak spent his last 18 years farming and preaching, was teeming early one morning last month with several hundred eager pilgrims, of which I was one, readying to undertake the celebrated a trip to my ancestor’s shrine.    

Making my way, on February 23, from my native border village of Dera Baba Nanak, or DBN, in Punjab’s Gurdaspur district-named after the Guru, who also lived there in the mid-16th century, we flocked to the Integrated Check Post inside the state-art-Land Port, whose rooftop resembles the sail-like gables of the Sydney Opera House, to complete formalities for our visit.

Blending traditional Sikh and Mughal styles, the tastefully and sensitively expanded gurudwara complex by Pakistan is spread over some 42 acres and features large domes, ornate arches, vast courtyards and a central Darbar Sahib prayer hall. Photo: Rahul Bedi

And though just 4.7 km away, historical animosities, numerous wars, enduring cross-border hostilities between Islamabad and New Delhi had rendered Kartarpur inaccessible for decades, till the corridor opened in November 2019 on Nanak’s 550th birth anniversary, following extended bilateral negotiations. According to statistics recently tabled in parliament, over 192,000 Indians, largely Sikh devotees, had traversed the corridor to the Gurdwara between August 2021-24.   

On frequent earlier visits to DBN as a youngster, I recalled standing on the dhusi or military mud embankment overlooking the barbed-wire enclosed ‘No Man’s Land’ stretch along the border, and gazing quizzically across lush green fields of ripening wheat and paddy on either side, at the glittering domes of the Kartarpur Sahib gurdwara, splendid in its remote isolation.  

In recent years, the Border Security Force (BSF) had erected a viewing gallery to observe the Gurdwara that was frequented by an incessant procession of visitors, particularly Sikhs from across Punjab for who Kartarpur, alongside the Golden Temple at Amritsar and Gurdwara Janam Asthan at Nankana Sahib, Nanak’s birthplace near Lahore, were highly revered worship spots. 

Equally fascinating to me in the 1960s was the sight of a small goods train that frequently plied close to Kartarpur on a narrow-gauge rail line, its steam engine lazily puffing its smoky passage to and from the frontier. It travelled to and from the district headquarters at Narowal in Pakistan’s Punjab province, and nearby Shakargarh tehsil, where nearly 50 Pakistan Army tanks were destroyed by Indian armoured columns in the fierce battle of Basantar in the December 1971 war.   

Also read: What Kartarpur Symbolises, for Guru Nanak, and for Sikhism Today

Almost a lifetime earlier, my father recalled frequently crossing the now near-dry Ravi River that eventually became........

© The Wire