The control of sacred spaces: Sikh shrines in Pakistan from the partition to the Kartarpur corridor

ABSTRACT

In November 2018, the governments of India and Pakistan agreed to develop the Kartarpur corridor linking the Sikhs’ two holiest shrines. The initiative is an important symbolic moment in the access to Sikh sacred spaces in Pakistan. This paper examines critically the efforts to control and manage this access since 1947. It assesses the policies of the two states to control access and reflects on the prospects for the Kartarpur corridor to become a ‘bridge of peace’. The Sikh case offers an unusual comparative case-study of closure of sacred spaces to a community in its ‘homeland’ and ‘holy land’.

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This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Acknowledgements

I should also like to acknowledge the helpful comments of the referees, Prof. Arvind-pal S. Mandair, Prof Ian Talbot and Dr Tom Lyne.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 Sacred spaces, according to Hassner (2003, 5), are characterised by three functions:

they are places of communication with divinity through prayer, movement or visual contact with images of the divine; they are places of divine presence, often promising healing, success or salvation, and they provide meaning to the faithful for metaphorically reflecting the underlying order of the world.

To be recognised as such these places need to have centrality and exclusivity for the faithful. The major Sikh gurdwaras in West Punjab associated with the gurus, as we shall see, fulfil the definition of sacred spaces and the criterions of centrality and exclusivity. For clarity we use the terms sacred spaces, shrines and gurdwaras as they pertain to the Sikh community’s case interchangeably, though we recognise the conceptual and institutional differences among them.

2 The terms of reference of the Boundary Commission were agreed by the leaders of the Congress, Muslim League and the Sikhs. Initially, Mountbatten asked each to send him a draft. Nehru wrote to reject the involvement of the UNO, agreed to the principle of continuous majority Muslim and non-Muslim areas, and as a concession to the Sikhs, stipulated that it should ‘take into account other factors’ (Mansergh and Moon 1982, 239). At the Viceroy’s Executive Council meeting held on 13 June 1947 to confirm the terms of reference, Baldev Singh did not speak (Ibid., 382).

3 A simple search on Google of ‘Sikh pilgrimage tours to Pakistan’ generates a large number of sites based in Pakistan. Sikh Tourism, for example, claims

Today’s Pakistan is the cradle of the Sikh religion. We proudly claim that Guru Nanak Dev Ji was born in this part of the subcontinent, spent most of his time here … and have more than ninety per cent of the Sikh shrines in Pakistan.

See http://www.sikhtourism.com.pk/index.php. Accessed 20 February 2019.

4 For a discussion of the concept of sovereignty within the Sikh tradition, see Mandair (2015).

Additional information

Funding

This article is the outcome of a Leverhulme Trust Research Fellowship number RF-2018-064/6 for ‘A World Turned Upside Down: Sikhs and the Partition of India.’ The support of the Trust is gratefully acknowledged.