THE decision to open a corridor from the Indian side to the Gurudwara Darbar Sahib in Kartarpur, Pakistan is one of the rare instances when the two governments of India and Pakistan have agreed to cooperate after a long period of stalemate and tensions between the two countries. The corridor from the Dera Baba Nanak Gurudwara in Gurdaspur district of Punjab to the Darbar Sahib Gurudwara where Guru Nanak Dev spent 18 years of his life, is being opened to mark the 550th birth anniversary of the founder of Sikhism next year. With this corridor, Sikh pilgrims from Punjab can go to the holiest place of Sikhism without any hinderance. At the ground-breaking ceremony near the Gurudwara Darbar Sahib inaugurated by Prime Minister Imran Khan, two union ministers from India Harsimrat Kaur Badal and Hardeep Singh Puri attended. So did Punjab minister Navjot Singh Sidhu, who had attracted a lot of criticism from the BJP for talking about the Kartarpur corridor with the Pakistani army chief while attending the swearing in ceremony of Imran Khan. The joint effort in preparing the Kartarpur corridor has once again underlined the necessity for improving relations and cooperation between the two countries. It also highlighted the importance of developing people to people relations as a vital component of restoring normalcy and good neighbourly relations. Some hopes were raised that the step to develop a corridor across the borders would create a congenial atmosphere for resuming dialogue between the two countries. Some commentators saw the decision of the Modi government in accepting the Pakistan offer for developing the corridor as a return to realism and a shift in its “no talks” stance which has been in place for the past four years. Even, Narendra Modi compared the Kartarpur corridor to the fall of the Berlin Wall and hoped it would act as a bridge between the two peoples.
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