Crumbling gurudwaras blur the lines on the India-Pakistan border
Indian Air Force jets flew over our heads; we could hear them buzz a few seconds after the planes disappeared into the bright sunny day. They flew in pairs. I don’t know how far the jets went inside Pakistan’s airspace.
Before us was the Gurdwara of Nanak, a sad structure with only its skeleton surviving. Inside there was graffiti which read, “Ibadat sirf Allah ki karien”.
Under the dome of the sacred shrine there were pictures of the 10 Sikh Gurus. The faces of all of these portraits had been chiselled out. Next to the pictures, there was a verse from Nanak’s poetry establishing his commitment to monotheism. A few cowherds stood around me staring at the headless pictures of Sikh Gurus.
This was the village of Jhaman, a historical village on the outskirts of Lahore, a village that had been made famous by Guru Nanak’s visit.
His maternal village is not far from here. About 50 kilometers away is the city of Sultanpur Lodhi in East Punjab. Nanak came here after visiting Jhaman. He went to Sultanpur Lodhi as a young man for work and spent more than a decade there. After undertaking his first spiritual pilgrimage, he decided to revisit his friends and family at Sultanpur Lodhi.
We were only a few metres away from the most dangerous border of the world.