ISLAMABAD – Thousands of Sikh pilgrims from across the world have gathered at a shrine in Pakistan to celebrate the Vaisakhi harvest festival amid heightened security.
The festival concluded Sunday, with pilgrims bathing and worshipping at a pond at Gurdwara Punja Sahib in the town of Hasanabdal, outside Islamabad.
Some 2000 Sikhs traveled to Pakistan from neighboring India despite recent tensions between the two nuclear-armed rivals. Sikhs are a small minority in Muslim-majority Pakistan, but many Sikh holy sites ended up in the country after the 1947 partition from India following independence from Britain.
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