With Guru Nanak’s blessing, friends from India and Pakistan meet after 78 years

Over five centuries ago, Guru Nanak spread the message of Ik Onkar (one God), equality, fraternal love, and righteousness. Even today, his teachings continue to bring people together, especially at Nankana Sahib, the birthplace of Guru Nanak, and Kartarpur Sahib, the place where he left his worldly form behind. Indians and Pakistanis, divided by the scars of Partition, continue to meet at these shrines in Pakistan. On Wednesday, two elderly friends met for the first time since 1947, with Guru Nanak’s blessing.

The friend from India was among the over 2,000 pilgrims granted permission by Islamabad to visit gurdwaras in Pakistan on the occasion of Guru Nanak Jayanti on Wednesday. The Indians, along with thousands of Pakistanis and international pilgrims, took part in the 556th birth anniversary celebrations of Guru Nanak in Pakistan’s Punjab province, specifically in the Nankana Sahib district, according to news agency PTI.

This was the first time since the four-day mini-war in May that Indian pilgrims crossed into Pakistan. The borders were closed following Operation Sindoor, in which India targeted terror infrastructure in Pakistan and Pakistan-Ocupied Kashmir.

Two old friends, separated by the Partition of 1947, used this opportunity for a rare reunion on Wednesday.

Outside the Nankana Sahib gurdwara, 90-year-old Muhammad Bashir stood with his grandsons. His eyes scanned the throng of pilgrims anxiously, searching for a face he hadn’t seen in over seven decades when Partition tore them apart, reported news agency AFP.

Bashir was looking for Sharda Singh, whose family had to flee to India. Bashir’s and Singh’s fathers were friends, said the report.

Though the two men had stayed in touch, they had never seen each other again.

When Sharda Singh emerged from the crowd, the two men rushed toward each other and embraced, both breaking down, according to AFP.

“I thought I would die without meeting you,” Bashir told Sharda, AFP report.

“But at last you are here. Now I can die in peace,” said Bashir.

Singh said he had dreamt of this moment for years. “It feels as if we have reunited after ages,” he told AFP.

KARTARPUR, NANKANAPUR GURDWARAS AS MEETING POINTS

When Indian pilgrims go to Gurdwara Darbar Sahib in Kartarpur, the final resting place of Guru Nanak, for visa-free access granted solely through the 4.5-km pathway linking India and Pakistan, they remain confined to the corridor’s precincts.

Pilgrims must stay within the designated area, and return to India by evening.

But this restriction has seemingly transformed the site into a place where Indian and Pakistani relatives and friends from the pre-Partition era meet. For those who were once forced to flee across the border, it feels like a homecoming. For some, a reconciliation with their past.

One such instance happened in 2022, when two brothers, Mohammad Siqqique and Habib alias Shela, met each other after 74 years of Partition. Split as children when their families fled in opposite directions during the 1947 riots, the duo, now silver-haired elders, reunited at Kartarpur corridor.

There is also the story of Amarjit Singh, a wheelchair-bound Sikh from Jalandhar, who, 75 years after Partition, met his sister Kulsoom Akhtar at the same gurdwara.

Left behind in India with a sibling while their parents migrated to Pakistan, Singh was adopted by a Sikh family and raised in the faith, unaware for decades of his roots across the Radcliffe Line.

Kulsoom, 65, who was born in Faisalabad and raised with tales of her “lost” brother from a grieving mother, travelled with her son Shahzad Ahmed to Kartarpur. Their meeting on September 10, 2022, made headlines globally.

There are likely dozens of such untold stories and enduring relationships that have survived the divide between India and Pakistan. Kartarpur Sahib and Nankana Sahib remain witnesses to them.

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