Guru Nanak founded Kartarpur in 1504 on the right bank of the Ravi River, establishing the first Sikh commune there. He lived in Kartarpur until his death in 1539, and the site became sacred to his followers. When India and Pakistan were partitioned in 1947, the Radcliffe Line placed Kartarpur on the Pakistani side and the town of Dera Baba Nanak on the Indian side. The bridge connecting them was destroyed during the Indo-Pakistani War of 1965. The gurdwara itself, by caretaker Gobind Singh's account, remained shut from 1947 to 2000 -- unstaffed despite occasional pilgrims, its grounds taken over by sharecroppers and used as a cattle shed. Pakistan began repairs in September 2000 and formally reopened the shrine in 2004. But for Indian Sikhs, it remained a place you could see but not visit.

The corridor was not built on a single gesture of goodwill. It was the product of persistent, often frustrating advocacy that stretched across two decades and survived multiple collapses in India-Pakistan relations. The idea first surfaced in 1998 during the tenure of Prime Ministers Nawaz Sharif and Atal Bihari Vajpayee, then gained momentum with the 1999 Delhi-Lahore bus diplomacy before the Kargil War derailed progress. Bhabishan Singh Goraya pursued the cause for 24 years. Manmohan Singh raised it in 2004; India's foreign minister ordered a feasibility study in 2008, only for the 2008 Mumbai attacks to freeze everything. The Sikh diaspora in Washington, D.C., commissioned their own study through the Institute for Multi-Track Diplomacy, which priced the corridor at $17 million. In November 2010, the Punjab state legislature unanimously passed a resolution supporting the passage. Still, nothing happened until August 2018, when Indian Punjab minister Navjot Singh Sidhu attended Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan's inauguration and Pakistan's army chief signaled willingness to open the route for Guru Nanak's 550th birth anniversary.

Once both governments committed, construction moved remarkably fast. Foundation stones were laid in November 2018 on both sides of the border. Pakistan's Frontier Works Organization built 4.7 kilometers of dedicated expressway, including an 800-meter bridge over the Ravi River, along with an immigration office and expanded gurdwara premises that grew from 4 acres to 42 acres. India constructed a state-of-the-art integrated check post, a 3.5-kilometer four-lane highway, and a 100-meter bridge at Dera Baba Nanak. On 24 October 2019, officials from both nations met at Zero Point near the border to sign the memorandum of understanding, allowing up to 5,000 Indian pilgrims per day to visit visa-free. Each visitor paid a $20 service charge -- which Pakistan's foreign office said covered only one-third of operational costs.

On 9 November 2019, around 12,000 pilgrims gathered as Imran Khan formally inaugurated the corridor by removing a curtain lifted by hot-air balloons from a giant kirpan. The Indian delegation arriving through the corridor included former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh, and Navjot Singh Sidhu, who told the crowd that while Alexander the Great won hearts through battle, Khan had won Sikh hearts by opening a road. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi compared the corridor's opening to the fall of the Berlin Wall. Poetry about Guru Nanak from Allama Iqbal's Bang-e-Dara was read by speakers from both nations. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, visiting in February 2020, called it "a corridor of hope" and a "symbol of interfaith harmony." The corridor closed during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, reopened in November 2021, and was indefinitely suspended in May 2025 following the Pahalgam attack and the ensuing India-Pakistan crisis.

The Kartarpur Corridor is 4.7 kilometers of asphalt, two bridges, and an immigration terminal. It is also a working argument that faith can occasionally override geopolitics. The corridor's existence has prompted proposals for similar visa-free passages: one to Gurdwara Rori Sahib near Lahore, another from Shimla to Murree linking the Western Pahari-speaking regions. Akal Takht Jathedar Giani Harpreet Singh has called for reciprocal access, asking that Pakistani Sikhs be allowed to visit Dera Baba Nanak on the Indian side without a visa. Whether the corridor remains open or closed at any given moment depends on the temperature of relations between two nuclear-armed neighbors. But the road itself is there -- the gurdwara visible not just from a platform now, but reachable on foot.