Framing South Asian politics: An analysis of Indian and Pakistani English print media discourses regarding Kartarpur corridor.

Fasih Ahmed,Muhammad Mubeen,Muhammad Nawaz,Ghaffar Ali

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0264115

Abstract

This paper aims to analyze the divergent perspectives of Indian and Pakistani English print media on opening the Kartarpur corridor. It is a four-kilometer-long cordoned-off strip from the Indo-Pak international border to the Gurdwara Darbar Sahib Kartarpur located in Pakistan. The basic purpose of establishing this corridor is to give easy access to the Indian Sikh community. The initiative was taken into account in August 2018, which resulted in the appearance of a vast quantity of contemplations in the national print media of both countries, especially until the opening of the corridor in November 2019. Print media plays a key role in building knowledge and framing the general public's opinion through interpreting an issue. The data were taken from Dawn, The News International (Pakistan), The Times of India, and Hindustan Times (India) from August 2018 to March 2020 using Lexus Nexus Library. The corpus analysis was carried out by applying the lexical study of Natural Language Processing (NLP) through its Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) tool to find out the general patterns or topics in the print media of both countries. It was found that Pakistani print media terms the Kartarpur corridor as a sign of regional peace, religious tourism, mediation, and diplomatic efforts. In contrast, Indian print media focuses on apprehensions related to traveling modalities, pilgrimage facilities, and tensions between the two states.

Highlights

The opening of the Kartarpur corridor on the India-Pakistan border made several noteworthy headlines in the daily newspapers of both states
The proposal required the bilateral consent of the Pakistani and Indian governments. This initiative sparked a long debate on all sorts of media on both sides to rationalize and predict the upcoming developments connected with the issue along with multiple questions, such as, what is Gurdwara Darbar Sahib Kartarpur (Kartarpur Darbar)?; why is it important for the Sikh community?; how did the Partition of 1947 generate the issue of Kartarpur corridor?; and what is the core purpose of the recent initiative carried out in 2018?
The outlook of the generated themes by Pakistani newspapers may be summarized by combining the words like "regional peace", "cooperation", "religious harmony,” "550th birthday of Guru Nanak", "bilateral relations", "bilateral trade", "religious tourism", "Sikh pilgrims’ sentiments,” "business opportunities", "mediation and diplomatic efforts", and "positive Indian response" etc

Summary

Introduction

The opening of the Kartarpur corridor on the India-Pakistan border made several noteworthy headlines in the daily newspapers of both states. It was planned to be opened in 2019 to facilitate the Sikh community for participating in the 550th birth anniversary of Baba Guru Nanak, located about four kilometers away from the border in Narowal district, Pakistan. It was a long-lasting desire of the Sikh community of the Indian Punjab since the Partition of 1947. This initiative sparked a long debate on all sorts of media on both sides to rationalize and predict the upcoming developments connected with the issue along with multiple questions, such as, what is Gurdwara Darbar Sahib Kartarpur (Kartarpur Darbar)?; why is it important for the Sikh community?; how did the Partition of 1947 generate the issue of Kartarpur corridor?; and what is the core purpose of the recent initiative carried out in 2018?

Objectives

Methods

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Discussion

Conclusion