Origin from 2019
On 8 and 9 November 2019, India and Pakistan opened the Kartarpur Corridor, a roughly four kilometer visa-free passage linking the Dera Baba Nanak shrine in India's Punjab state to Gurdwara Darbar Sahib in Kartarpur, Pakistan, where Guru Nanak, the founder of Sikhism, spent his final years and died in 1539. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated the corridor's Indian side on 8 November, and Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan inaugurated its Pakistani side the following day, opening the first route for pilgrims to cross between the two shrines since the 1947 partition of British India. Under the agreement, up to five thousand Indian devotees a day could cross without a visa, and about seven hundred pilgrims made the crossing on the opening day, ahead of Guru Nanak's five hundred fiftieth birth anniversary on 12 November. United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres later visited the corridor and described it as a Corridor of Hope.
Facts
Dates
StatusEstablished marks the corridor's own opening and the pilgrim access it created. It is not a claim about the wider diplomatic relationship between India and Pakistan or about the political debate the corridor's approval generated in either country, questions this atlas does not adjudicate here. Learn More
How India and Pakistan Opened the Kartarpur Corridor for Sikh Pilgrims
This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.
On 9 November 2019, India and Pakistan opened the Kartarpur Corridor, a roughly four kilometer visa free passage linking the Dera Baba Nanak shrine in India's Punjab state to Gurdwara Darbar Sahib in Kartarpur, Pakistan, where Guru Nanak, the founder of Sikhism, spent his final years and died in 1539.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated the corridor's Indian side and Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan inaugurated its Pakistani side on the same day, opening the first route for pilgrims to cross between the two shrines since the 1947 partition of British India.
Under the agreement, up to five thousand Indian devotees a day could cross without a visa, and 562 pilgrims made the crossing on the opening day, ahead of Guru Nanak's five hundred fiftieth birth anniversary on 12 November. United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres later visited the corridor and described it as a Corridor of Hope.
What the opening changed for Sikh pilgrims was restoring direct access to the site of Guru Nanak's death after more than seven decades in which the 1947 partition had kept the two shrines apart, timed to place the corridor's first pilgrims on the ground just days ahead of the anniversary the corridor's own opening was built to mark.
Connections
Associated With
This source names India directly: "On 8 and 9 November 2019, India and Pakistan opened the Kartarpur Corridor, a roughly four kilometer visa-free passage linking the Dera Baba Nanak shrine in India's Punjab state to Gurdwara Darbar..."
Source First Anniversary of the Opening of the Kartarpur Corridor (Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Pakistan)
This source names Kartarpur directly: "2019, India and Pakistan opened the Kartarpur Corridor, a roughly four kilometer visa-free passage linking the Dera Baba Nanak shrine in India's Punjab state to Gurdwara Darbar Sahib in Kartarpur..."
Source First Anniversary of the Opening of the Kartarpur Corridor (Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Pakistan)
Occurred In
Source First Anniversary of the Opening of the Kartarpur Corridor (Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Pakistan)
Spread Event Of
Closes a 42 year gap since 1984's Operation Blue Star Triggers Violence Against Sikhs, the most recent event already on Sikhism's map, with the two governments reopening pilgrim access to Guru Nanak's own shrine across the same partition era border.
Source First Anniversary of the Opening of the Kartarpur Corridor (Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Pakistan)
Sources
1. First Anniversary of the Opening of the Kartarpur Corridor (Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Pakistan)
Big Moment: Indian Sikhs on Historic Pilgrimage to Pakistan (Al Jazeera)
Reader Challenges (0)
No disputes yet. Spotted an error or a better source? Open the first one.
Sign in to dispute this or suggest a correction.
View At A Past Year
Choose a year to see this entry's facts and connections as the atlas records them at that moment: what it held then, what it held instead, and what it had not yet adopted. Choose Present for the current record.