It was a historic moment Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi seeing off the first group of Sikhs at the Indian side of the border for Kartarpur in Pakistan, where they can now freely congregate at their most sacred religious site. Pakistan, in a landmark agreement signed recently with India, has established a corridor that gives Sikhs from India visa-free access to their holy site. For the 20 million Sikhs and millions of other Indian devotees of Guru Nanak, the founder of Sikhism, the opening of the Kartarpur Corridor is certainly a big occasion. Since, it comes at a time when Sikhs all over the world are celebrating the 550th birth anniversary of Guru Nanak.

Pakistan’s and Prime Minister Imran khan move is being hailed as a victory for humanity. Sikh devotees from across the world are traveling to Pakistan for the celebrations. But reaching this point has not been easy. In the face of human rights violations in Indian-occupied Kashmir, where Muslims were not even allowed to congregate for Friday prayers, it is Pakistan’s empathy and level-headedness that has enabled the agreement to be reached. When the partition took place in 1947, it threw the lives of dozens of millions of people into a complete disarray, especially those living in Punjab and Bengal, the two large states most heavily impacted by the division of the country. Several million Sikhs, who had been living in parts of Pakistan, notably West Punjab, had to leave not just their property, jobs and friends behind as they fled to India, they had to also leave a very large chunk of the Sikh heritage as undivided Punjab was the place where Sikhism was founded and had flourished for centuries.

Hence, most Sikhs have been yearning for the possibility of visiting these spiritual sites without falling prey to the tumultuous bilateral ties that have seen more of downs than upsides in the past seven decades. From the dozen odd key spiritual places, Kartarpur has been the most significant one. But it has been slow to come about. It was back in 2000 that Pakistan agreed to the Indian suggestion to build a bridge to allow visa-free access to the holy site. However, since then the corridor, like practically everything else in India-Pakistan equation, has been hostage to the ups and downs in the bilateral ties. The other was the Indian Supreme Court’s verdict handing over the Babri Mosque premises to the Hindu community for construction of a temple, while directing the Indian government to allot the Muslims land for a mosque in Ayodhya. Instead of employing a tit-for-tat policy with India, Pakistan chose empathy over odium and reason over realpolitik. Defying all odds, Khan stuck to his promise to the Sikh community. No wonder that on the eve of celebrations for Guru Nanak’s birthday, gratitude is being expressed to the Pakistani leader by Sikh communities across the world.

Pakistan has shown its commitment to regional peace by opening the corridor. India needs to reciprocate by lifting multifarious curbs on basic human rights in Kashmir and agree to hold talk’s withPakistan to resolve all outstanding issues. Pakistan is focused on the welfare of its people, including minorities. It has moved on from peaceful coexistence to fostering communal relations on the basis of mutual respect and understanding. This was the reason the Kartarpur talks were not sacrificed by Pakistan on the altar of other complex political issues. Instead, these talks now show how real progress can be achieved by focusing on people and resolving their problems through empathy and compassion, rather than coercion and intimidation.