Since the Ceasefire in May, Indian Sikhs Make Pilgrimage to Pakistan

Indian Sikhs make the first pilgrimage to Pakistan since the four-day war in May between India and Pakistan. Over 2,100 visas were granted by the Pakistani government and were warmly welcomed by Pakistani officials, “who threw rose petals over them and gave them flowers.”

This hospitality comes after a brief war when India launched Operation Sindoor on May 7 that struck nine places in Pakistan. 

The Chief of the Air Staff from the Indian Air Force admitted to shooting down Pakistani jets. “Air Chief Marshal A P Singh had earlier this month said that the Indian Air Force (IAF) had neutralised 11-12 aircraft of Pakistan, including F-16 and JF-17 fighter jets, during the four-day conflict. He had dismissed Pakistan’s claim of shooting down seven aircraft of India as fanciful tales,” The Deccan Herald reports. 

The two countries had gone to war with each other again after a terrorist attack in the Kashmir region on April 22, in the resort town of Pahalgam when Pakistani terrorists shot 26 people dead and injured 20. 

Operation Sindoor lasted until May 10 when the two countries agreed to a ceasefire at Pakistan`s insistence. 

Anshu Nagpal Chatterjee, a scholar at the Institute for South Asia Studies at the University of California Berkeley, says that the number of aircraft shot down continues to change as officials speak on the matter.

“It’s a changing number because Pakistan claimed that it hit four to five planes, then solidified it to five, and then Donald Trump has gone from five to seven and potentially eight this week,” Chatterjee said. 

But President Trump has a different motivation when it comes to pressuring Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. 

“His motivation there is to basically pressure Modi into stop buying oil from Russia. And he has decided that he is going to basically provoke him and show him that he, United States[,] is not going to back India unless it stops its oil purchases from Russia,” said Chatterjee.

During President Trump`s first term in office, his relationship with India was closer, which had made Pakistan uncomfortable. 

“So till last year, the last Trump administration and Modi administration were best friends, right?” Chatterjee said. “They were meeting, he visited India, Modi came here twice. So you had this relationship, which was clearly a friendly relationship, which was stressing out Pakistan.”

Even though Trump repeatedly claimed he had stopped the India-Pakistan conflict, India has denied this claim, with PM Modi correcting this statement, saying that the U.S. was not involved in mediation at the time. 

Chatterjee explains that “Trump has continued to say that he is stopping conflicts around the world and that he is seeking a Nobel [Peace Prize] for his efforts. As you all know, and this is another one he has claimed that he has stopped, but India has actually said, ‘No you did not participate in this. Yes, we talked to you, but that’s not the reason we stopped. The reason we stopped is because India met its objectives of striking nine places in Pakistan.’”

The Indian government also released its version of events. 

“PM Modi told President Trump clearly that during this period, there was no talk at any stage on subjects like India-U.S. trade deal or US mediation between India and Pakistan,” Indian Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri said in a press statement on Wednesday.

India and Pakistan are both nuclear armed countries and they are the only two countries that have had proxy wars, so it would only take a matter of time when either of the South Asian countries decide on whether to use nuclear weapons on each other. 

“We don’t need a Hiroshima strike. So the argument is, oh, Pakistan may use a small nuclear weapon, which they have said they may. In that case, why would India not use a bigger nuclear weapon?” said Chatterjee. “Or if India uses a small nuclear weapon, why would Pakistan not use a bigger weapon? Nuclear weapon, this kind of stuff. So there is a fear of escalation which actually is happening slowly. May 2025 showed that there is a conventional war escalation between them.”

Since the India-Pakistan Partition of 1947, these neighbors have had a very hostile relationship. There was the Kashmir War between 1947-1948. Then there was the India/Pakistan War of 1965. In 1971, India stepped in to secure Bangladesh`s independence from Pakistan. In 1999, there was another war in Kargil in the Kashmir region.

Even though these countries are hostile towards each other, culturally, these people are mostly Indo-Aryan, and are the same no matter which part of the border they are from. They speak the same languages, which are Urdu, Punjabi, Sindhi, Gujarati, and many other languages. They also eat the same food, listen to the same music, and watch the same films.