India blocks pilgrims from Pakistan

Modi administration is using the coronavirus pandemic to restrict pilgrimage visas

LAHORE:

The perennially tense relationship between India and Pakistan has hit a new low during the Covid-19 health crisis. While Islamabad continues to allow Sikhs and Hindus to cross the border to perform religious rituals, the Narendra Modi government remains rigid in its policies towards pilgrims from Pakistan.

According to detail available with The Express Tribune, the Indian government has stopped issuing visas to pilgrims from Pakistan. “Pilgrimage visas to India are not being processed,” confirmed a resident of Lahore, who wishes to cross the border for an upcoming Urs of a revered saint.

Despite India’s refusal to allow pilgrims from Pakistan, the government in Islamabad has recently issued visas to members of the Sikh community. The move allowed more than 600 Sikh pilgrims to visit Nankana Sahib for the birth anniversary of Baba Guru Nanak last week.

The exchange of pilgrims and uninterrupted religious tourism between the two rivals was sealed in an agreement more than four decades ago. Under the pact, Pakistan promised to issue visas for Sikh and Hindu religious events. Similarly, New Delhi also agreed to issue visas to Pakistani pilgrims for the annual Urs of revered saints, who are mostly buried across the border in India.

“India has never followed the agreement on religious tourism,” said Imran Siddiqui, spokesperson of Pakistan’s Ministry of Religious Affairs. Siddiqui confirmed no visas were issued to Pakistani pilgrims this year.

India, he said, is using the pandemic as an excuse to restrict Sikh pilgrims from visiting Pakistan. On the other side of the border, Devika Mittal, a senior professor at the University of Delhi and a human rights activist, also believes that religious tourism must continue.

“There has been no positive progress in improving the ties between the two countries this year,” said Mittal from New Delhi, where he is based.

Expressing her concerns, Devika said: “Limited number of pilgrims should be allowed for important religious events.”

Despite India’s stern stance, Prime Minister Imran Khan’s government opened the historic Kartarpur Corridor, the 4.1-kilometer-long overland passage that links Dera Baba Nana’s shrine in India’s Gurdaspur with the Gurdwara Darbar Sahib in Pakistan. Once again in June this year, Islamabad allowed Sikh pilgrims to visit the final resting place of Guru Nanak. In a similar concession las week, members of the Sikh community from India were allowed to enter Pakistan.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 10^th, 2020.