January 23, 2001New Delhi / Chandigarh / Television Studios08:00 Hours
In South Block, proposals did not usually explode into public life overnight.
They were meant to move like groundwater—slow, invisible, controlled by gatekeepers who understood that in India, the first enemy of diplomacy was not the other side.
It was tomorrow's headline.
And yet, by breakfast, the corridor was already on television.
Not as a policy paper. Not as a conditional offer. Not as a feasibility discussion.
As a scandal.
The top crawl on one channel read:
"PAKISTAN OFFERS VISA-FREE KARTARPUR CORRIDOR — 'MANAGEMENT FEE' TO BE CHARGED"
Another channel was worse:
"$5 TO ENTER PAKISTAN: PILGRIMAGE OR TOLL BOOTH?"
And in the margins of the story, the word that always arrived when sentiment met politics was already taking shape:
Betrayal.
The Source
Brajesh Mishra watched the coverage without blinking.
He had not "announced" anything. He had not signed his name.
He had done what seasoned operators do when they want to force a government's hand without owning the act: he had fed the machine.
A friendly editor here. A trusted correspondent there. A quiet "background briefing" framed as concern for national security.
It was not a leak in the literal sense.
It was a controlled puncture—enough to let air into the room and reveal who panicked first.
In one studio, a panelist leaned into the camera and said, "This is Pakistan's dirty move. A visa-free corridor means infiltration. It means smuggling. It means handlers in crowds."
On another channel, a different voice said, "And why a fee? Why should Indians pay to access their own sacred heritage? This is a humiliation disguised as generosity."
The anchors did not say "Mishra." They did not say "NSA." They said the phrase that protects all invisible hands:
"Sources."
But Vajpayee—watching from the quiet of his residence—understood the difference between a random leak and a deliberate one.
Random leaks are messy.
This was clean.
This was framed.
This was designed to produce maximum heat and minimum accountability.
Punjab's Political Spark
By mid-morning, the political class in Punjab reacted in predictable lines—each party sensing an opportunity to seize the narrative before it seized them.
The Akali Dal held a press interaction and chose a word that would travel faster than policy detail.
"This is a pilgrimage," their spokesperson said, voice firm. "Not tourism. Not commerce. A fee at a sacred threshold looks like a tax on devotion. Call it management, call it facilitation—people will hear it as something else."
He did not use the word jizya as a slur. He used it as a symbol—because symbols are sharper than arguments.
"Why should Sikh pilgrims pay," he asked, "to fulfill an ardas that has existed for generations?"
The statement was crafted to inflame, but also to protect: it attacked the fee, not the corridor itself. It positioned Akali Dal as defender of Sikh dignity without rejecting access.
The television studios immediately turned it into a fight.
A nationalist panelist snapped, "So now you want a corridor and you want to dictate terms? This is exactly how Pakistan plays games."
Another replied, "The game is ours too. We are letting Delhi bargain away sentiment without consultation."
Every sentence made the corridor less like a humanitarian gesture and more like a weapon in domestic politics.
The Hardline Counter-Frame
By noon, the hardline narrative took a darker turn—less policy, more identity.
A fringe voice in one studio accused Sikh organizations of "being used." Another called diaspora petitioners "naïve." A third, more reckless, implied that those demanding access were "weakening India's position."
The word "traitor" surfaced in the mouths of a few extremists—the kind of people who always look for internal enemies when they can't defeat external ones.
It was not mainstream India speaking.
It was the loud minority that thrives on conflict.
But television does not amplify truth. It amplifies heat.
And heat was the commodity of the day.
In Sikh homes, the reaction was not fear first.
It was insult.
The corridor had been framed as a trap. The diaspora had been framed as a nuisance. The request had been framed as disloyalty.
A devotional desire—darshan, seva—had been dragged into the mud of suspicion.
In Chandigarh, a gurdwara committee member said on a local channel, voice shaking with controlled anger:
"We asked respectfully. We did not threaten. We did not protest. We submitted petitions with dignity. And now we are being called names for wanting to see our own sacred place?"
The anchor tried to interrupt.
He did not let him.
"If devotion is treason," the man said, "then what kind of nation are we building?"
That clip, too, began to circulate—now the story had a second flame.