“Peace does not always begin with treaties; sometimes it begins with crossings.”

In his colloquium AIA Fellow Summar Iqbal Babar examined the Kartarpur Corridor as a form of peace-building infrastructure between India and Pakistan. Established in 2019, the translocal corridor enables pilgrims and tourists to cross the border to visit Sikh shrines in an otherwise highly militarized region. The success of the Kartarpur corridor remains an anomaly. Babar claims that the reason for its effectiveness lies in its systematic nature which institutionalizes mobility. He argues that the shared religious and cultural heritage and memory can be used to reconcile the trauma of the separation of the Punjab region since 1947. Everyday mobility fosters encounters that humanize the “other” and cultivate a shared sense of identity. In this way, Sikh shrines and the Kartarpur Corridor function not merely as heritage sites, but as spaces of reconciliation and bottom-up peace-building.