ISLAMABAD: The Pakistan High Commission in New Delhi said on Monday it had issued 112 visas to a group of Indian Hindu pilgrims to visit the Katas Raj temples in Pakistan’s eastern Punjab province from March 6 till March 12.
The 900-year-old Katas Raj temples, one of the holiest sites in South Asia for Hindus, form a complex of several temples connected to one another by walkways that surround a pond named Katas that Hindu sacred texts say was created from the teardrops of Shiva as he wandered the Earth inconsolable after the death of his wife Sati.
The complex is located in the village of Katas in Punjab’s Chakwal district, some 110 km (70 miles) south of the capital Islamabad.
“Charge d’Affaires, Mr. Saad Ahmad Warraich, wished the pilgrims a spiritually rewarding yatra and safe journey,” the Pakistani high commission said in a statement.
Under the Pakistan-India Protocol on Visits to Religious Shrines of 1974, each year thousands of Sikh and Hindu pilgrims from India visit Pakistan to attend various religious festivals and occasions.
“The issuance of pilgrimage visas to them is in line with the Government of Pakistan’s efforts for facilitating visits to religious shrines and promoting interfaith harmony,” the high commission added.
Non-Muslims make up only a little over three percent of Pakistan’s more than 241 million population.
In 2021, Pakistan opened the Kartarpur corridor as a visa-free crossing, allowing Indian Sikhs to visit the temple just 4km (2.5 miles) inside Pakistan where Sikhism’s founder Guru Nanak died in 1539.
Many Sikhs see Pakistan as the place where their religion began as Nanak was born in 1469 in a small village near the eastern Pakistani city of Lahore.
