Pakistan Grants Visas to Over 2,100 Sikh Pilgrims for Guru Nanak’s Birth Anniversary Celebrations
- Rahaman Hadisur
- 2 hours ago
- 2 min read
Hadisur Rahman, JadeTimes Staff
H. Rahman is a Jadetimes news reporter covering Asia
More than 2,100 Sikh pilgrims from India have been granted visas by Pakistan to attend a 10-day festival marking the 556th birth anniversary of Guru Nanak, the founder of Sikhism. The move, announced by Pakistan’s High Commission in New Delhi, was described as part of broader efforts to promote interreligious and intercultural harmony between the two nations.
The celebrations, which begin Wednesday, will see pilgrims gather at Nankana Sahib, Guru Nanak’s birthplace located west of Lahore. From there, devotees will travel to other significant Sikh religious sites across Pakistan, including Kartarpur, where Guru Nanak is believed to have spent his final years and is buried.
The pilgrimage comes at a delicate time in India-Pakistan relations. Earlier this year, the two countries engaged in their most serious military clashes since 1999, resulting in more than 70 deaths. In the aftermath, the Wagah-Attari border crossing, the only operational land route between the nations, was closed to general traffic.
The Kartarpur Corridor, a special visa-free route that opened in 2019 to enable Indian Sikhs to visit the Kartarpur shrine without formally crossing the international border, has remained shut since the conflict in May.
That violence erupted after New Delhi accused Islamabad of supporting a deadly attack on tourists in Indian-administered Kashmir, an allegation Pakistan strongly denied.
Despite the tensions, the visa approval for Sikh pilgrims is being viewed as a positive gesture aimed at keeping cultural and religious exchanges alive. Sikhism, founded in the 15th century in the Punjab region that now spans both India and Pakistan, maintains deep historical ties on both sides of the border. Many of the religion’s most sacred shrines, including Nankana Sahib and Kartarpur, remain in Pakistan, making cross-border pilgrimages an essential part of Sikh spiritual life.
