Invoking Punjabi pride, Pakistan’s Punjab Chief Minister Maryam Nawaz on Thursday met a group of Sikh pilgrims, mostly from India, and reminded the Kartarpur Sahib… Addressing a gathering at the Kartarpur Sahib Gurdwara, her father Nawaz Sharif said the country should not go to war with its neighbours.

As part of the first official national celebrations of Baisakhi, Punjab’s harvest festival, Maryam welcomed some 2,400 Sikhs who are currently in Pakistan to participate in Baisakhi celebrations.

Kartarpur Sahib Gurdwara houses the samadhi of the first Sikh Guru, Sri Guru Nanak Dev, and Sikh pilgrims from all over the world come here to perform rituals.

Addressing a rally at the Gurdwara Darbar Sahib in Kartarpur, 130 kilometers northeast of Lahore, Maryam quoted her father, three-time former prime minister Nawaz Sharif: “We should not fight with our neighbours. We need to open up for them.”

Maryam, 50, is considered the political heir to Nawaz Sharif. She was elected as Pakistan’s first female chief minister in February.

“When I became chief minister, I also received greetings from my Punjabi brothers from across the border. I am Pakistani but I am also a Punjabi (hardcore Punjabi),” she said.

“We want to speak Punjabi here like Indian Punjabis. My grandfather Mian Sharif came from Jati Umra in Amritsar. When a Punjabi Indian brought the soil of Jati Umra, I put it on his (grandfather’s) grave,” she said.

Maryam said she appointed Ramesh Singh Arora as the first Sikh minister in the government.

“My father laid the foundation of the Kartarpur Corridor in 2013. He also made Sikhs members of the Punjab Assembly,” she claimed.

She said she had ordered the construction of a road in Kartarpur as per the wishes of Sikhs.

The corridor was inaugurated in November 2019 by then Prime Minister Imran Khan. Maryam tried to take credit for the corridor, saying her father was passionate about opening the corridor for Indian Sikhs and he took the initiative to appoint a local Sikh MP.

Maryam also said that this is the first time that Baisakhi is being celebrated at the government level in Pakistan. “This is my Punjab and together we are celebrating all the festivals of minority communities like Holi, Easter and Baisakhi,” she said.

At the gurdwara, she sat with the devotees in the temple for some time and then had langar with them. Later, she hugged an old Indian woman from Amritsar and exchanged pleasantries. Lady bless her.