Pakistan

Pakistan holds the earliest ground of the Panth. Guru Nanak was born at Nankana Sahib and died at Kartarpur on the Ravi, Guru Arjan Dev was martyred at Lahore, and Lahore was Maharaja Ranjit Singh's capital. Partition in 1947 put these places on the Pakistan side. The Encyclopaedia of Sikhism's account says about 3.5 million Hindus and Sikhs then moved from West Punjab to India.

Who is there now. The 2023 census is reported to have counted about 16,000 Sikhs in Pakistan, a small fraction of one percent of its people. TIME reported in 2010 that Peshawar had the largest Sikh community in the country, some 500 families.

Key moments

• 1947: Partition. The Encyclopaedia says management of the Sikh gurdwaras in Pakistan passed to the Waqf Board. At Nankana Sahib the government first let 15 Sikhs stay for daily services, and cut the number to 5 in 1968.
• 1974: the India-Pakistan Protocol on Visits to Religious Shrines. Pakistan's envoy said in 2018 that that year's Baisakhi visit was made under it, and in 2026 a former PSGPC president noted that the Saka Nankana Sahib commemoration is not covered by it.
• 9 November 2019: the Kartarpur Corridor opened.
• 3 November 2020: Pakistan's Ministry of Religious Affairs moved management of Gurdwara Darbar Sahib Kartarpur from the Pakistan Sikh Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (PSGPC) to the Evacuee Trust Property Board (ETPB).
• 7 May 2025: India suspended the corridor. On 31 July 2026 the government told the Lok Sabha that the security situation required it to stay shut.

Who runs the shrines. The ETPB is a statutory board of the Government of Pakistan that manages evacuee properties and the religious shrines of Hindus and Sikhs. The Pakistan Sikh Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee works with the ETPB on pilgrimages; its president, Ramesh Singh Arora, is also Punjab's minorities minister.

How many gurdwaras. Counts differ with who is counting. A 2012 tally had 16 gurdwaras open for worship out of about 175; the PSGPC's website listed 21 operational in 2024; and a count by Gurmail Singh in 2025 found 151 still standing (tallies as listed by Wikipedia).

Pilgrims. In November 2024 close to 2,550 Indian pilgrims crossed at Attari-Wagah for Guru Nanak's 555th birth anniversary, but the SGPC said 1,481 of the 2,244 visa applications it sent were not granted. More than 2,000 went in November 2025, with the ETPB seeing them off.

Disputed sites. In 2026 Jasbir Singh of the Balochistan Sikh Council said a gurdwara building in Quetta had been demolished and handed to a private company. Ramesh Singh Arora said the property belonged to a Sikh individual, not a gurdwara. Outlook noted that the claim had not been independently established.