NEW DELHI: India on Wednesday welcomed Pakistan’s plans to build the Kartarpur corridor, which would allow Sikh pilgrims from across the border to enter the country without a visa, even as it refused to resume talks for a bilateral dialogue with Islamabad.
On Wednesday, Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan laid the foundation stone to kickstart the construction of the corridor which will connect the final resting place of Guru Nanak, Sikhism’s founder, in Kartarpur, Pakistan with the Dera Baba Nanak in Gurdaspur in India’s Punjab.
The four-kilometer corridor is expected to be completed in six months.
“I am happy. For the last 20 years, India has been asking for the Kartarpur corridor and for the first time Pakistan’s government has responded positively,” Indian Foreign Minister, Sushma Swaraj, said.
She, however, added that resumption of a “bilateral dialogue and the Kartarpur project are two different things”.
“Bilateral dialogue will always see that terror and talks don’t go together. The moment Pakistan stops terrorist activities in India, the dialogue can start,” Swaraj told a press conference in Hyderabad.
On Monday, India’s Vice-President, M Venkaiah Naidu called the corridor project “a bridge between the people of the two countries”.
While laying the foundation stone of the corridor in the Indian side of the border, Naidu emphasized that “the corridor opens new doors. It is a path that opens up new possibilities”.
“It promotes deeper understanding and a new resolve to connect the people of our two countries through love, empathy, and invisible threads of common spiritual heritage,” he added.
“We have to create together, a history that will make our two countries and the entire world a more peaceful place for our children and grandchildren to live and grow together,” he underlined.
In a sharp contrast, Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh, who jointly inaugurated the Kartarpur Corridor with Naidu, raised the issue of terrorism -- allegedly sponsored by Pakistan -- and warned Islamabad to “rein in” its army, adding that the Indian army was “fully prepared.”
In an interview with a web magazine two weeks ago, Singh had blamed Pakistan's Inter-services Intelligence (ISI) for attempting to revive the Khalistani movement, which seeks a separate homeland for the Sikhs.
“Terrorist groups working at the behest of the ISI-backed KLF (Khalistan Liberation Force) and other groups based in Pakistan are clearly working on a conspiracy to destabilize Punjab,” Singh had said at the time.
Last Friday, India’s foreign ministry summoned Pakistan’s deputy chief of mission in New Delhi and lodged a strong protest against the "harassment and denial of access to Indian High Commission officials and attempts at hostile propaganda during the visit of Indian Sikh pilgrims to Pakistan”.
Former Indian High Commissioner to Pakistan, TCA Raghavan said that “concerns about Khalistanis should not bother us too much”.
“It should not lead to a breakdown of the relationship between India and Pakistan,” Raghavan, who is also the author of the book, “The People Next Door: The Curious History of India-Pakistan Relations, said.
Talking to Arab News, he said: “After all, we have concerns about Khalistanis in Canada, yet we have a relationship with Canada. We have concerns about Khalistanis in the UK. That does not mean we should stop everything with the UK. We have to adjust the concerns and we have to be cautious. We should ensure that Khalistanis are isolated. Anyway, no one gives them much importance,” he said.
Welcoming the initiative for the corridor he said: “It’s a good development because, in a situation where nothing is moving forward between India and Pakistan, it’s good that we are moving on a certain issue.”
Professor Ronki Ram of Panjab University was on the same page. “We are always driven by conspiratorial tendencies and this is the by-product of partition. We always believe that Pakistan and India cannot think about each other’s larger interests. Further deterioration of the relationship between India and Pakistan would be harmful to both the countries. We cannot afford this kind of animosity in today’s world,” he said.
