Talk:Kartarpur Corridor

Edit conflict?

@Kautilya3: I had removed passport free and made it visa free... and had put two sources for the same. You put back passport free?DiplomatTesterMan (talk) 20:25, 2 December 2018 (UTC)

Yeah, it looks like I overwrote your edit. I have tried to recover it now. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 20:35, 2 December 2018 (UTC)

Ok. I thought so. Just wanted to confirm. Thanks. DiplomatTesterMan (talk) 21:04, 2 December 2018 (UTC)

Vajpayee raised it in 1999

per this source At Kartarpur Ceremony, Imran Khan Emphasises Cooperation, Says Army on 'Same Page

Atal Bihari Vajpayee, in 1999, had been the “first” to propose a visa-free corridor for pilgrims to travel from Dera Baba Nanak in India to Darbar Sahib in Pakistan during his visit to Lahore. The Pakistani government did not respond to this proposal, according to the MEA. The UPA government had also raised it in the last ten years at several levels.

I think this should be included in the article. Thoughts ? --DBigXrayᗙ 20:44, 7 December 2018 (UTC)

See diff. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 21:46, 7 December 2018 (UTC)

DBigXray, yeah, this seems to be worthy of a place in the article's body with a small mention its lede about Vajpayee being the first one to raise the Kartarpur issue at a diplomatic, bilateral level. Regards, SshibumXZ (talk · contribs). 21:57, 7 December 2018 (UTC)

Kautilya3 thanks for the diff and SshibumXZ for your comments. Regarding the Diff,  User:DiplomatTesterMan I think your phrase and the 2 sources you added and the one above don't agree. Basically all three source said that Vajpayee raised it none of them said Sharif raised it and in fact, looking at the future developments, Sharif appears to have shot down this proposal. So it is not accurate as per the source to say Vajpayee and Shariff. --DBigXrayᗙ 12:36, 8 December 2018 (UTC)

Yes, my conscience was pricking me when I wrote Sharif too. :D and I should have listened to it. This is a quick reply from my side for now. (This needs a more detailed consideration which will follow once I am able to find better sources). I was looking for what the Pakistani media says about this, and I want to bring everyone's attention to a line in an article from Dawn (newspaper), (notable enough, just from Pakistan though).

The proposal for the corridor has been on the table since 1988 — when Pakistan and India agreed in principle to construct a corridor from Dera Baba Nanak in India to Kartarpur Sahib in Pakistan — but tense relations between the two countries prevented progress on the plan.

Although not directly relevant, but indirectly part of the background of all this, the article also says this -

The foreign minister recalled Quaid-i-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah's August 11, 1947 speech, quoting him as saying: "You are free; you are free to go to your temples, you are free to go to your mosques or to any other place or worship in this State of Pakistan. You may belong to any religion or caste or creed that has nothing to do with the business of the State."

I think for WP:BALANCE and WP:VERIFY , until we editors SshibumXZ, DBigXray, Kautilya3 come to a consensus, something like the following should be added, the Indian Media says "this" and the Pakistan media says "this", about who started first, also adding that in principle even Jinnah said "this". I think all of us here know very well that Indian media will try to say we initiated it and the Pakistani media will say something else (Do any Pakistani sources say Vajpayee started it?). But we ourselves can't start editing like either Indians or Pakistanis here, sadly :D. The Wire is a good source, and no matter how anti-govt, but it is still Indian. The Wire will never write Indian troops opened fire first on the LOC, whereas the Pakistani media will never write Pakistani troops fired first (right?).

Can anyone find sources talking about the Kartarpur corridor before 2010? DiplomatTesterMan (talk) 13:15, 8 December 2018 (UTC)

See what this source says - Peacemaking: From Practice to Theory - Volume 1 - Page 72-73 (2011)

[...] the Sikh Diaspora has agreed to pay for the $17 million construction cost of the Kartarpur Peace Corridor [...]"

When I read this new info I am like, where did this angle come from!!! .... Considering all of this new information, the background and history part of this Wikipedia article needs a LOOOOT of work :D DiplomatTesterMan (talk) 13:45, 8 December 2018 (UTC)

And lastly, for now until everyone else weighs in, what SshibumXZ wrote is very important - "first one to raise the Kartarpur issue at a diplomatic, bilateral level". Pakistan and India at a national level is different as compared to the level of the Sikh community and what they want. I think since Partition, since families were divided by the arbitrary radcliffe line in many places, since a major religious site was no longer possible to visit easily, the Sikhs have always wanted it since 1947. See this BBC cite to back this up...BBC - Kartarpur corridor: A road to peace between India and Pakistan? . So the background can be changed to that the Sikhs have always wanted it. Deciding who raised the issue first diplomatically is different. Will wait for others to comment. DiplomatTesterMan (talk) 13:58, 8 December 2018 (UTC)

There is a lot of posturing by both sides. So we should be careful.

It seems fairly certain that the 1974 protocol on religious visits does not cover Kartarpur. The Indian MEA claims that it raised it several times. The Gurdwara was however "remained shut from 1947 to 2000", according to its caretaker. Why did it get opened in 2000? Perhaps Vajpayee's prompting. But we can't be sure if it was Nawaz Sharif's initiative or Musharraf's. Remember the Kargil war intervening. So, it might have been some time after 2000 that it got opened. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 14:32, 8 December 2018 (UTC)

For now, Kautilya3, or anyone else can edit my lines related to Sharif and Vajpayee since it is inaccurate currently. I have no issues with this. Can be done now itself. A detailed history can considered added later. DiplomatTesterMan (talk) 14:52, 8 December 2018 (UTC)

In the article by DAWN tagged by Kautilya3 it says this (Singh below refers to Gobind Singh, caretaker of the gurdwara) -

“Pakistan has several times offered to India that it will construct a road to Kartarpur,” says Singh. “The proposals were even approved and during the Musharraf era a tender was floated with 50 per cent of road construction being carried out. But India never responded.”

So in a way now we have India MEA saying Pak never responded, and this line says India never responded. But then this is the quote of the caretaker of the gurudwara. That is very different as compared to an MEA saying the same. DiplomatTesterMan (talk) 15:08, 8 December 2018 (UTC)

Sorry, the caretaker of the Gurdwara is hardly an expert on international relations. He would have believed whatever he was told. Not a reliable source. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 15:18, 8 December 2018 (UTC)

Related to the Protocol on visits to Religious Shrines, September 14, 1974, this article in The Tribune (pk) in April - "1974 protocol: Envoy urges India to allow religious tourism actually connects Sikhs to the 1974" , connects Sikhs to the protocol and saying India is a fault in not implementing it, (in a way covering Kartarpur? but not directly mentioning kartarpur) just to complicate things even more. But mentioning the 1974 protocol needs to go into the main article too somewhere in brief in the background too. The MEA link says "The list of shrines to be visited will be finalised shortly through correspondence. The agreed list may be enlarged from time to time by mutual agreement." - anyone has a source for the lists? Is Kartarpur a part of this now? DiplomatTesterMan (talk) 15:23, 8 December 2018 (UTC)

References

Institute for Multi-Track Diplomacy

@DiplomatTesterMan: you asked, where did this angle come from? It came from the Institute for Multi-Track Diplomacy, led by a former American diplomat, John W. McDonald. He also claims to have been the force behind the "People's bus" across the Kashmirs video, part 1, part 2. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 20:43, 8 December 2018 (UTC)

The timeline checks out. On 20 or 21 June, 2008, McDonald give a press conference at the border near Dera Baba Nanak. On 27 June, Pranab Mukherjee (not SM Krishna, apparently) meets the Pakistani foreign minister. The day after (28 June), he stands at the same spot on the border, and announces that the Indian government will conduct a feasibility study. So, something was agreed between India and Pakistan. The Indian MEA's claim that there was no response from Pakistan seems dubious. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 21:54, 8 December 2018 (UTC)

@Kautilya3: Thank you for following this up. I want to include a small section in the background related to this. Do you think the following sources are notable enough to include within the article. They are all related to John W. McDonald, Institute for Multi-Track Diplomacy (IMTD) and the report the feasibility report they came out with related to the corridor.

1. "Blueprint for peace corridor between India and Pakistan" Source ANI, 2009. (But I can't find this anywhere else except for here, OneIndia.)
2. Institute for Multi-Track Diplomacy (IMTD) Annual Report 2010, pg 6
3. Bridging the Sikh Divide: Could a proposed new initiative help establish a peace corridor between two of the holiest Sikh religious sites? Source thediplomat.com, 2011
4. Kartarpur Marg 55 page Report by Surinder Singh, 2010, with contributions by John W. McDonald. But can't find the content.

DiplomatTesterMan (talk) 12:20, 11 December 2018 (UTC)

Excellent. Go for it! And, I don't think it needs to be a "short" paragraph. IMTD is clearly the force behind the whole project. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 13:51, 11 December 2018 (UTC)

But don't link John W. McDonald. That is clearly somebody else. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 13:53, 11 December 2018 (UTC)

Opps. Yes. John W. McDonald, clearly someone else. Silly overlook. Thanks. DiplomatTesterMan (talk) 14:39, 11 December 2018 (UTC)

Arbitrary Radcliffe Line?

Not really arbitrary. This is the famous Gurdaspur award, the most contentious decision of all of Partition. Prem Shankar Jha notes:

The terms of reference of the Boundary Commission had stated that it would 'demarcate the boundaries of the two parts of the Punjab on the basis of ascertaining the contiguous majority areas of Muslims and non-Muslims. In doing so it will also take into account other factors.' When he saw this, Mountbatten sent a query to the Secretary of State for India, Lord Listowell, asking what 'other factors' might mean. Listowell, who had succeeded Pethick-Lawrence as Secretary of State for India, replied that these were entirely for the Punjab Boundary Commissioners to decide. However, he said, 'other factors must include the location of Sikh shrines'.[16] This looks very much like a directive to the Radcliffe Commission. Sir Cyril certainly paid heed to it, but not unduly at Pakistan's expense.

He also states:

Radcliffe was giving Nankana Sahib in Sheikhupura district, the birthplace of Guru Nanak, and the second holiest shrine of the Sikhs, to Pakistan, as well as Lahore which contained Gurdwara Shahidganj, and four other important shrines related to Gurus Arjun Dev and Ram Das. He could hardly have cut Amritsar off too. If that was not to happen, Gurdaspur was the obvious choice, for it contained two other important shrines, Dera Baba Nanak and Sri Gobindpur. This, more than anything else, probably persuaded the Boundary Commission to decide from the outset that these tehsil must come to east Punjab.

Interestingly, there is no mention of Kartarpur here. Nankana Sahib is the second most important shrine for the Sikhs. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 15:14, 8 December 2018 (UTC)

Yes, not really arbitrary. Slip of tongue, umm, fingers. I've just heard it so often that the facts need reminding. (By the way, this is a wonderful book, the source you have quoted, though I read it 2-3 years back I still remember how well it was written and it brought out so many new things for me in such a interesting read). DiplomatTesterMan (talk) 16:05, 8 December 2018 (UTC)

References

1974 Protocol on visits to Religious Shrines

I found a source connecting the 1974 protocol to Kartarpur.

Government’s view is that a faster and more efficient manner to ensure easy access to the sacred Shrine of Kartarpur Sahib for all Indian pilgrims is by seeking inclusion of the Kartarpur Sahib Shrine and further liberalization of the 1974 Protocol on visits to Religious Shrines. Government has raised the matter of expanding the list of Shrines included in the 1974 Protocol on visits to Religious Shrines including during meetings at the level of Foreign Ministers. There has been no response from Pakistan so far.
PIB, Government of India, MEA (30-July-2014 17:34 IST) - Land corridor to religious places in Pakistan

So this is another aspect of the article that needs to be considered and added, as I mentioned above, and Kautilya first noted. DiplomatTesterMan (talk) 15:31, 8 December 2018 (UTC)

References

The Gurdaspur district

The 1947 Gurdaspur district had four tehsils: Gurdaspur and Batala tehsils, which now form part of the Gurdaspur district, Pathankot tehsil, which is now the Pathankot district, and the Shakargarh tehsil, which is now part of the Narowal District. We should not link the 1947 Gurdaspur district to the present day Gurdaspur district. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 17:39, 8 December 2018 (UTC)

Sidhu card

Interesting tidbit of what the Indian press calls the "Sidhu card":

Sources told The Indian Express that Sidhu, who is also a minister in the Congress government in Punjab, was allocated a numbered seat towards the rear along with other guests, which he had occupied before he was approached by a protocol officer and escorted to a front-row seat. He was then seated next to Masood Khan, the president of Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK), a person whose identity the Indian politician was not aware of until informed by an official of the Indian High Commission.

Interesting dynamics! -- Kautilya3 (talk) 19:46, 8 December 2018 (UTC)

Indeed interesting! I hope Sidhu writes a tell all autobiography about his life, including all this someday :D DiplomatTesterMan (talk) 12:24, 11 December 2018 (UTC)

Two more interesting tidbits added to the page, related a punjab cabinet minister putting black tape on the foundation stone on the Indian side hours before the inauguration. CREDIT WAR haha :D Another interesting part added to lead is about how people look at the shrine on the Pakistani side from the Indian side, and an elevated platform has even been constructed for the same. (All cites already in article.) DiplomatTesterMan (talk) 19:36, 11 December 2018 (UTC)

References

Help needed...Contradictory Information in Article?

Please compare these two paragraphs in the article -

1.

After partition, Indian Sikhs would go over informally, crossing a bridge on the Ravi river which joined Dera Baba Nanak with Kartarpur Sahib. But the bridge was destroyed in the Indo-Pakistan war of 1965 and once again in 1971 during the Bangladesh Liberation War. Until a border fence was set up in the area in 1986, Sikhs would go over the Indian Pakistan border illegally for the pilgrimage.

2.

Gobind Singh, the caretaker of the gurdwara at Kartarpur, said the gurdwara had "remained shut from 1947 to 2000".[25] According to Akali leader Kuldeep Singh Wadala, the gurdwara had been abandoned till 2003. It served as a cattle shed for the villagers and its lands were taken over by share-croppers.[20] Since 2003, however, the Pakistani government has reportedly taken initiatives for the upkeep of Sikh religious shrines.

Both have reliable sources right?. But how could the the gurdwara be abandoned or remained shut for all these years.... if people went on over the border even before? DiplomatTesterMan (talk) 20:19, 11 December 2018 (UTC)

@Kautilya3: What do you think about this? DiplomatTesterMan (talk) 20:22, 11 December 2018 (UTC)

I think the first source is not a WP:HISTRS. Newspapers are only reliable for news, not history. The man called Goraya, who seems to be the main source for that article, is espousing plenty of make-believe history and Pakistani POV. I have no idea why he calls it the "Chattpur tehsil", which doesn't seem to exist anywhere in the real world.

The second paragraph is attributing select pieces of information to people that can be presumed to have some direct knowledge of what they are talking about. The first paragraph doesn't have any attributions. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 07:31, 12 December 2018 (UTC)

I can tell you that there was no mention of Kartarpur in any of the partition discussions. There was a Sikh judge on the Punjab boundary commission. He could have raised it with Radcliffe. I can also tell you that the Sikhs and Muslims of Gurdaspur district most brutally murdered each other during the Partition. There are no Sikhs left in the Shakargarh tehsil (even though there are Hindus) and no Muslims left on the Indian side of the Gurdaspur district. There is plenty of revisionist history now being written in the Sikh propaganda literature. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 07:48, 12 December 2018 (UTC)

There is a full article written by Goraya, published in the "Journal of the Punjab University Historical Society". It has this gem:

When Sir Cyril Radcliffe drew the boundary-line he happened to allot the whole of district Gurdaspur to Pakistan (see June 3, 1947 announcement). How could the universal point go to Pakistan alone? The miracles then began to happen. J.L.Nehru first Prime Minister of India exercised his influence over Mountbatten and the Partition Plan was revised. This time Gurdaspur was bisected.

So, Radcliffe supposedly drew a line 3 June 1947. But he didn't even arrive in India till 8 July. So there goes the reliability of Goraya as well as the Punjab University Historical Society. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 09:00, 12 December 2018 (UTC)

Thank you for checking this out in such an interesting way and also the background check on Goraya :D DiplomatTesterMan (talk) 12:22, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

References

Partition of the Gurdaspur district

Districts of Undivided Punjab

Here is a quick summary of the partition of the 1947 Gurdaspur district. The population of the district was roughly 50-50 Muslim and non-Muslim. In the 1931 census, apparently the non-Muslims were in a majority. In the 1941 census, the Muslims had a marginal majority. The precise figures are contested.

The district had four tehsils, Shakargarh and Pathankot in the north, Gurdaspur and Batala in the south.

• Shakargarh had a clear Muslim majority.
• Pathankot had a clear non-Muslim majority.
• Gurdaspur and Batala probably had a marginal Muslim majority.

In Wavell's partition line, the whole of Gurdaspur district was included in 'Hindustan'. In the 'notional' partition line attached to the Independence of India Act, the whole district was included in 'Pakistan' (or at least that is what people believed at the time). However, it is said that the Independence Act wasn't setting out a 'partition line', which had to be decided by a separate Punjab Boundary Commission in due course. Rather it was a line demarcating the districts with Muslim/non-Muslim majority. This division was meant for the Punjab Legislative Assembly, which would sit in two separate sessions to decide whether Punjab was to be partitioned or not. The Muslim majority districts (green) were to sit in one session and the non-Muslim majority districts (pink) in another.

The Punjab Boundary Commission was made of four judges: 2 Muslim, 1 Sikh and 1 Hindu. Each of them came up with a different partition line. There was no consensus whatsoever. So, the task fell on Radcliffe to make the final decision (hence the name Radcliffe Line). Radcliffe knew ahead of time that the major disputes were along the Ravi river, with Lahore being Musim-majority and Amritsar non-Muslim majority. (As you can expect, the Muslim judges put Amritsar in Pakistan and the Hindu/Sikh judges put Lahore in India.) Assuming that Lahore and Amritsar would go two ways, the next question was the Gurdaspur district. He decided that the Shakargarh tehsil would go to Pakistan (reasonably), that the Pathankot to India (also reasonably), but that both Gurdaspur and Batala tehsils would go to India as well. This meant a 3-to-1 ratio in favour of non-Muslims and it became highly controversial.

Theories abound as to why Radcliffe did that. Prem Shankar Jha believes that it was because of Sikh shrines. But it is hard to tell if Radcliffe even knew about the Sikh shrines that were in the frame. The other theory, which has significant documentation to support it, is that the canals from the Ravi river that fed Amritsar went through the Gurdaspur and Batala tehsils. Radcliffe even floated the idea with his Commissioners whether the canals could be put under joint control of India and Pakistan. They agreed that it would be a good idea, but they said it wasn't in their mandate to decide that. So, it seems that all the four Commissioners knew that the fate of Gurdaspur and Batala tehsils was being decided, but I can't say whether they figured out that Shakargarh would go to Pakistan.

Kartarpur is in the Shakargarh tehsil and Dera Baba Nanak in the Gurdaspur tehsil. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 13:37, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

1950s

Amanverma121, you have been edit-warring over the statements made about 1940s and 1950s history, claiming they were "non-cited claims". Both the statements you have removed are from the Tribune article titled "Access first promised in 1969". Here is a link to the article again [1]. Can you confirm that you have read the article? -- Kautilya3 (talk) 09:19, 17 December 2018 (UTC)

India-Pakistan bickering

We have tried to minimize India-Pakistan bickering in this article, because that is not what the article is about. So, additions like this are not welcome.

There are various claims about Pakistan "offering" to open a corridor since 2000. Yet there were no official announcements or diplomatic exchanges regarding it. The only diplomatic exchanges that are confirmed are those during Vajpayee-Sharif bus diplomacy and the 2008 initiative provoked by Kuldip Singh Wadala and Ambassador McDonald. Finally, two unilateral announcements were made recently. Indian government states that until it made its own announcement the Pakistan government has neither confirmed nor denied its various "offers". -- Kautilya3 (talk) 18:03, 30 December 2018 (UTC)

Flags

Swapping the order of the flags is also not constructive. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 16:51, 10 November 2019 (UTC).

Security concerns

The Indian Govt. had expressed reservations about Pakistan using this to stoke Khalistani passions. Also recently there were several articles [2] [3]%20[4] on this. The "security concern" section should be expanded using this info.--DBigXrayᗙ 12:05, 10 November 2019 (UTC)

Unless the Indian govt. has officially or publicly communicated something like this to Pakistan, these articles could hardly be relied upon. Bigfoot Yeti (talk) 14:09, 10 November 2019 (UTC)

If the Indian government has concerns, we say it has concerns. If it has communicated them, we say it has communicated them. I don't see why there is any confusion. Suhasini Haider and The Hindu are best quality news sources in South Asia. You can't simply remove them based on WP:OR. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 17:50, 10 November 2019 (UTC)

It seems you guys have been canvassed to gang up here. Anyways, if the Indian govt. has any concerns, it has to have expressed them on record. Unless Suhasini Haider is quoting any Indian govt. official on record, we can't put any hearsay of her Opinion pieces. Bigfoot Yeti (talk) 23:37, 10 November 2019 (UTC)

It is not an "opinion piece". It is a news report and a reliable source. In fact, all the sources you deleted are reliable sources. You can take it to WP:RSN if you wish. (I am sure you know what that is, don't you?)

I wrote the majority of this page, including the section you deleted. I didn't need to be "canvassed". -- Kautilya3 (talk) 05:20, 11 November 2019 (UTC)

Indian sources can be biased sometimes even if they are by reputable agencies just like in Pakistan. The News International, Dawn (newspaper) are as reliable as the Hindu. I think we should just should add statements that promote neutrality of the article. Pakieditor (talk) 20:27, 15 September 2020 (UTC)

Removal of valid reference on Kartarpur Corridor and undoing my revision about ETA requirement to travel

Hi MTCoster! Can you tell why did you undid my revision and removed a valid reference provided by me about ETA required for corridor instead of visa travel?Is there any wiki policy in doing so? Guglani (talk) 06:48, 15 November 2019 (UTC)

@MTCoster please explain your undid revision action in light of above raised questions.Guglani (talk) 15:16, 15 November 2019 (UTC)Guglani (talk) 15:27, 15 November 2019 (UTC)

While the content of your revision may have contained valid, factual information, that information was inserted inappropriately into the page. From memory, three things about your revision caught my attention:

• The inserted text broke the surrounding sentence, rendering it unreadable,
• The new information referenced a detail more specific that generally expected in the opening paragraph, and
• A raw URL was inserted directly into the page without hyperlink or reference.

Had it not been for the ".gov.in" extension on the included URL, I would have mistaken your edit for spam. MTCoster (talk) 20:28, 15 November 2019 (UTC)

Corridor for terrorism

• https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/pakistan-use-kartarpur-khalistan-terror-former-army-chief-1590700-2019-08-23

There is a quote from General beg. Kautilya3 thoughts on what can be added here and in which sections ? I feel the article above is useful. --DBigXrayᗙ 08:25, 24 November 2019 (UTC)

• https://thewire.in/rights/sikhs-khalistan-threat-kartarpur

found one more here. --DBigXrayᗙ 08:26, 24 November 2019 (UTC)

• Note: It's better to avoid adding such statements on the article. We should promote mutuality. Peace. Pakieditor (talk) 20:19, 15 September 2020 (UTC)

The question is whether the inclusion of this would be WP:DUE. It doesn't seem to be the case.VR _talk 02:04, 18 September 2020 (UTC)