Kartarpur Corridor a big step, but not a stepping stone to peace

Senior Indian and Pakistani officials came together for two ceremonies last week that marked rare instances of cooperation in a bitter bilateral rivalry. The ceremonies — one in India, one in Pakistan — formally launched the construction of a new corridor, known as the Kartarpur Corridor, stretching across the India-Pakistan border. Once completed, it will allow Sikhs to travel, visa-free, across the frontier to visit temples in both countries.

In recent years, the two countries have struggled mightily to breathe life into a stalemated relationship. Dialogue has lapsed since the Mumbai terror attack of 2008 — a tragedy that marked its 10-year anniversary on the very week that the Kartarpur Corridor was inaugurated.

To be sure, there’s been some modest progress in improving relations, particularly through trade and other low-hanging fruit.

But it has been limited.

There hasn’t been much reason to believe this malaise would end anytime soon — and certainly not with India in full election campaign mode. And yet there they were; top officials from both countries hobnobbing happily against the backdrop of one of the biggest confidence-building measures in recent years.

But why did the two sides come together at a moment when they are so far apart? One possibility is that each side was motivated by purely humanitarian considerations — a simple shared desire to better enable Sikhs on both sides of the border to worship at their chosen temples.

There are also possible political factors at play. Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan enjoys many personal links to India from his cricketing days and he appears to have a genuine desire to strengthen cultural and person-to-person relations. The Kartarpur Corridor is a safe and risk-free means of furthering this goal. Even Pakistan’s powerful military, which calls the shots on India policy and has often resisted conciliatory moves toward New Delhi, was on board.

On the Indian side, there may be political advantages that emerge from measures that benefit Sikhs in India. While Sikhs comprise a very small percentage of the country’s overall population, they are overwhelmingly represented in Punjab — the border state where the Indian portion of the Kartarpur Corridor will be based. Punjab hosts a state election in 2019, and the BJP — the party that currently leads India’s central government — lost that election in 2017. In this sense, domestic politics in both countries have, for once, encouraged rather than discouraged bilateral cooperation.

Having said all this, the significance of the Kartarpur Corridor should not be overstated. It is a confidence-building measure, not a prologue to a peace process. It does little to address the core tension points — namely the Kashmir dispute and terrorism — that have long prevented the two sides from holding serious talks.

And yet this gloomy reality check only amplifies the special nature of those ceremonies inaugurating the new corridor. Perhaps there will be similar moments in the coming months, but more likely there will not.

Indeed, those heartwarming scenes could be fleeting and a reminder that, in South

Asia and so many other parts of a volatile and conflicted world, peace and cooperation are so often — too often — elusive. This should make us cherish those relatively rare moments of goodwill and good cheer even more.