The year 1947 is usually talked about in terms of what it created. Two nations, two flags, two armies. What gets spoken about less is what it stranded. Thousands of temples, shrines and Gurdwaras found themselves inside a new country whose majority faith was different from the people who had built them. Priests packed what they could carry. Families left in days. The stones stayed.
Almost eight decades later, a traveler crossing into Pakistan encounters something unexpected: a landscape embedded with some of the oldest living Hindu and Sikh religious sites in Asia. Katas Raj, where a sacred pond is said to have formed from Shiva's own tears. Hinglaj Mata, a cave shrine revered by both Hindus and local Muslims deep inside Balochistan. Nankana Sahib, the birthplace of Guru Nanak, founder of the Sikh faith. Gurdwara Darbar Sahib at Kartarpur, where Nanak lived his final eighteen years and is believed to have died.
This guide covers these sites in depth: what they are, why they matter, what condition they are in today, and what a person needs to know if they wish to visit in 2026.
Why These Temples Are Inside Pakistan at All
Before 1947, the territories that now form Pakistan were home to large and established communities of Hindus, Sikhs and Jains alongside the Muslim majority. The Punjab region in particular had a deeply intermixed religious geography. Lahore had thriving Hindu merchants and Sikh scholars. Sindh province, which today has the highest surviving concentration of active Hindu temples in Pakistan, was known for its syncretic culture where Sufi Muslim dargahs and Hindu temples often shared the same neighborhood.
The Partition of British India in August 1947 triggered one of the largest forced migrations in recorded history. An estimated 14 to 17 million people moved across the new border in both directions. Hindus and Sikhs left what became Pakistan. Muslims left what became India. The violence that accompanied this migration killed somewhere between 200,000 and two million people depending on which historical estimate one consults.
The temples they left behind fell into one of three fates. Some were damaged or destroyed in the communal violence of Partition. Some were converted to other uses, repurposed as government offices, storage facilities, schools or private homes. A third group survived, though most in states of partial neglect. It is this last category, along with the active temples maintained by Pakistan's small remaining Hindu minority, that forms the subject of this article.
At the time of Partition there were approximately 428 Hindu temples in the territory that became Pakistan. Today, estimates of functional sites vary widely, with some surveys counting as few as 22 regularly active temples, the majority located in Sindh province.
The Hindu Temples of Pakistan: Site by Site
Of all the Hindu sacred sites in Pakistan, Katas Raj carries perhaps the most layered mythology. The name itself derives from the Sanskrit word Kataksha, meaning tearful eyes, and the founding legend centers on grief. According to Hindu scripture, when Sati, the wife of the god Shiva, died, Shiva wandered the earth inconsolably. His tears fell in two places and formed two sacred ponds. One is at Pushkar in Rajasthan. The other is the pond around which the Katas Raj complex is built.
The temple complex, also known as Qila Katas, sits in the Potohar Plateau region of Pakistan's Punjab province at an elevation of around 2,000 feet. It consists of seven interconnected temples, known collectively as the Sat Ghara, arranged around the sacred Katas pond and connected to each other by stone walkways. The architecture spans multiple periods: the most ancient structures date to the 6th century CE, built in the style associated with the Hindu Shahi dynasty which ruled the region roughly between 615 and 950 CE. Medieval temples were added in subsequent centuries, and a Buddhist stupa remnant also survives within the complex, evidence of the region's religious layering long before Partition.
The site connects to the Mahabharata as well. The Pandavas are said to have spent a portion of their exile near Katas Raj. The founder of Sikhism, Guru Nanak, is also believed to have visited the complex, and the Sikh emperor Ranjit Singh made pilgrimage here for Vaisakhi in 1806 and returned again in 1818 and 1824.
Post-Partition, the local Hindu community that had maintained the site departed for India. Indian pilgrims continued visiting for the Maha Shivaratri festival until the Indo-Pakistani War of 1965, after which access was blocked until 1984. The temples suffered decades of neglect. A particular and ongoing damage has been the depletion of the sacred pond's water levels, caused by groundwater extraction from cement factories that were established in the surrounding area. Restoration work was launched by the Pakistani government in January 2017, including the installation of shikharas on the temple spires.
In July 2025, the complex was partially damaged by flooding. Despite this, the site remains open to visitors. In 2025 Pakistan issued visas to 154 Indian Hindu pilgrims specifically to attend the Katas Raj Dham festival, continuing a practice of limited pilgrimage access that has been in place since 2013.
Hinglaj Mata Mandir is not simply the largest Hindu pilgrimage site in Pakistan. It is one of the 51 Shakti Peethas of Hinduism, the sacred sites associated with the body of the goddess Sati. According to mythology, this is the spot where Sati's head fell to earth. That alone places it in a category of profound importance that extends far beyond Pakistan's borders and speaks to millions of Hindu devotees across the Indian subcontinent and its diaspora.
The shrine is a natural cave located along the Hingol River in the Lasbela district of Balochistan, surrounded by the Hingol National Park. The setting is wild and remote: a narrow gorge, ochre-coloured limestone formations, a river that runs silver through the valley. The cave opening is small and the inner sanctum has no idol in the traditional sense; the goddess is worshipped through a naturally occurring rock formation, which is itself considered the divine presence.
What makes Hinglaj particularly striking in the context of Pakistan is its cross-faith following. The temple is also venerated by many local Muslims who refer to the goddess as Nani Pir, the grandmother saint. During the annual Hinglaj Yatra, which typically takes place over four days in late March or early April, the site draws tens of thousands of pilgrims. The Pakistani military and civilian administration provide logistical support for the event, including roads, security and medical facilities.
The Hinglaj Yatra is the single largest annual Hindu pilgrimage event in Pakistan and one of the largest in all of South Asia. It attracts pilgrims from Sindh, Punjab, Balochistan and from the Sindhi Hindu diaspora in India and beyond.
In the middle of Soldier Bazaar, one of Karachi's oldest commercial neighborhoods, stands the Panchmukhi Hanuman Mandir. The name refers to the five-faced form of Hanuman worshipped here. The temple is significant not only religiously but as evidence of the fact that a Hindu community has continuously maintained active worship in Pakistan's largest city throughout the decades since Partition.
A Shree Rama Chandra Temple stands adjacent to it. Sindh province as a whole has the highest concentration of actively functioning Hindu temples in Pakistan today, a reflection of the fact that the Hindu minority in Sindh was proportionally larger than elsewhere and a greater number of community members stayed or returned after Partition.
Sharda Peeth is among the most poignant of all the lost sites associated with Indian religious heritage in Pakistan-administered territory. Dedicated to the goddess Saraswati, the patroness of knowledge and learning, the complex in the Neelum Valley of Azad Kashmir was historically one of the most important centers of Sanskrit scholarship on the subcontinent. Scholars traveled from across India to study here. It was, in essence, one of ancient India's universities.
Today the complex stands in ruin. The structures are partially collapsed, overgrown with vegetation, the carved stonework exposed to the mountain weather. Indian Kashmiri Hindus have repeatedly requested access to perform pilgrimage at the site, and there have been proposals for a corridor similar to the Kartarpur model, but as of 2026 no such access exists. The site remains deeply emotional for the Kashmiri Pandit community in particular, for whom Sharda Mata holds supreme religious significance.
The Thar Desert in Sindh province contains a cluster of medieval Jain temples near the town of Nagarparkar that are among the least-known heritage sites in all of Pakistan. The temples were built primarily during the 14th and 15th centuries, carved from the local white granite of the Karoonjhar Hills. The craftsmanship is extraordinary: the stone screens, known as jalis, are worked into geometric patterns of exceptional delicacy, and the temple towers show the distinctive corbelled rooflines of medieval Jain architecture.
The site includes the Bhodesar Mosque, which was itself converted from an earlier Hindu or Jain structure, its original carved stone columns still visible within the later Islamic construction. Nagarparkar has received growing attention from heritage conservationists, and the Archaeological Department of Sindh has undertaken limited restoration work, but the region's remoteness and the harsh desert climate continue to threaten these structures.
The Sun Temple of Multan, dedicated to Surya the solar deity, is one of the most extraordinary cases in this entire account because it no longer exists above ground. The temple, also known as the Aditya Sun Temple, once stood as a magnificent center of solar worship and is believed to have been built by Samba, son of Krishna, according to Hindu tradition. Its origins trace back more than 5,000 years in mythological reckoning.
The original structure was destroyed during the medieval period and now lies buried beneath the earth of present-day Multan. Despite its physical disappearance, the site retains deep resonance. Multan was historically known as the City of Saints and the City of Shrines. The fact that one of its oldest religious foundations was a Hindu solar temple speaks to the ancient complexity of a city that is now entirely Muslim in its religious character.
The Sikh Gurdwaras of Pakistan
If the situation of Hindu temples in Pakistan is one of partial survival and gradual restoration, the situation of Sikh Gurdwaras is different in character. Pakistan holds approximately 80 percent of the Sikh religion's most sacred sites. This is a direct consequence of the fact that Sikhism was born in the Punjab region, specifically in what is now Pakistani Punjab. The founder of the faith, Guru Nanak Dev Ji, was born at Nankana Sahib, lived and preached across the region, and died at Kartarpur. Both locations are inside Pakistan.
Nankana Sahib is the most sacred birth site in the Sikh faith. Guru Nanak Dev Ji, who founded Sikhism in the 15th century, was born here in 1469. The gurdwara that marks the site, Gurdwara Janam Asthan, was completed in 1819 CE. The main structure is a two-story building with white domes bearing floral bases and inverted lotus emblems. The interior floor is white marble, and the primary entrance is a golden door engraved with holy texts and images of the Sikh Gurus.
The compound includes accommodation for approximately 500 Sikh pilgrims, along with a kitchen and dining area where the Sikh tradition of langar, the communal free meal, is observed. Each year thousands of Sikh pilgrims from India and from the global Sikh diaspora travel to Nankana Sahib to commemorate the birth anniversary of Guru Nanak, a festival known as Gurpurab.
Pakistan hosts around 195 Gurdwaras in total. The five most significant are Kartarpur Sahib, Gurdwara Panja Sahib at Hasan Abdal, Gurdwara Dera Sahib in Lahore, Nankana Sahib, and the Samadhi of Ranjit Singh in Lahore.
Guru Nanak founded the village of Kartarpur in 1504 CE on the right bank of the Ravi River and established the first Sikh commune there. The name Kartarpur means the place of God. After two decades of spiritual journeys that took him across India, Ceylon, Central Asia and the Arabian Peninsula, Guru Nanak returned here to live out his final years. He died at Kartarpur in 1539. The Gurdwara Darbar Sahib was built on the site of his death and is today considered one of the holiest sites in all of Sikhism.
After Partition, the Radcliffe Line placed Kartarpur inside Pakistan while the town of Dera Baba Nanak on the Indian side of the Ravi River went to India. For over seven decades, Indian Sikhs could look across the river toward the white dome of Darbar Sahib but could not visit it without obtaining a Pakistani visa, which was practically very difficult.
The Kartarpur Corridor changed this. First proposed in 1999 by Prime Ministers Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Nawaz Sharif, the corridor was finally inaugurated on 9 November 2019, the day after Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi opened the Indian side in the presence of former PM Manmohan Singh, Punjab CM Amarinder Singh and others. Pakistani PM Imran Khan opened the Pakistani side the following day. The corridor created a 4.1 kilometer visa-free crossing from Dera Baba Nanak to Gurdwara Darbar Sahib, allowing up to 5,000 Indian pilgrims per day to visit and return within a single day.
The agreement was renewed in October 2024 for another five years. However, India suspended access to the corridor on 7 May 2025 following the Pahalgam attack in Jammu and Kashmir. Pakistan has kept its end of the corridor open. As of early 2026, the suspension from the Indian side remains in place, though Sikh pilgrims from outside India, including the large diaspora communities in Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States, continue to have access.
Hasan Abdal is a small town about 48 kilometers from Rawalpindi. Its Gurdwara Panja Sahib is sacred for a specific and tactile reason: a stone at the site is said to bear the imprint of Guru Nanak's hand, placed there to stop a boulder rolled down by a local Muslim saint named Wali Kandhari. The word Panja means hand or palm.
The gurdwara is visited by thousands of Sikh pilgrims each year, particularly during Baisakhi. The Evacuee Trust Property Board of Pakistan administers this site along with many others. Hasan Abdal was also an important Mughal-era garden town and the broader area around the gurdwara contains Mughal garden remains, giving a sense of the layered history of this region.
Lahore's Gurdwara Dera Sahib marks the site where the fifth Guru of Sikhism, Guru Arjan Dev Ji, was martyred in 1606 on the orders of Mughal Emperor Jahangir. The Gurdwara stands inside the historic walled city area, close to the Lahore Fort. Guru Arjan Dev Ji compiled the Adi Granth, the foundational scripture of Sikhism, and his death was the first martyrdom in Sikh history, a defining moment for the faith.
The adjacent Samadhi of Maharaja Ranjit Singh is also in Lahore. Ranjit Singh, who ruled the Sikh Empire that at its height included all of present-day Pakistani Punjab, NWFP and Kashmir, died in 1839. His cremation memorial stands near the Badshahi Mosque and the Lahore Fort, in the heart of a city he governed for nearly four decades. The presence of his Samadhi in Lahore means that the founding ruler of the last great Sikh polity rests inside Pakistan.
The Scale of What Was Left Behind
Numbers help to make this concrete. At the time of Partition in 1947 there were approximately 428 Hindu temples in the territory that became Pakistan. Within months, as the Hindu population departed, the vast majority of these had no congregations left to maintain them. Some were damaged or looted in the communal violence. Others were taken over by the new Pakistani state and placed under the Evacuee Trust Property Board, a government body originally established to manage properties abandoned by those who left during Partition.
Today, estimates of functional Hindu temples vary significantly. Some reports from civil society organizations count as few as 22 sites in regular active use. A government survey identifies around 400 properties flagged for potential restoration, though implementation has been inconsistent. The highest concentration of functioning temples is in Sindh province, which also has the largest remaining Hindu minority. The 2023 census data indicates that Hindus make up approximately 1.6 percent of Pakistan's total population, constituting the country's largest religious minority group. This amounts to roughly 2 to 4 million people, most living in Sindh.
| Site | Location | Faith | Status (2026) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Katas Raj Temples | Chakwal, Punjab | Hindu | Partially restored; open to visitors; pilgrimage access for Indian Hindus under 1974 Protocol |
| Hinglaj Mata Mandir | Lasbela, Balochistan | Hindu | Active; major annual Yatra in spring; cross-faith veneration |
| Panchmukhi Hanuman Mandir | Karachi, Sindh | Hindu | Active |
| Sharda Peeth | Neelum Valley, AJK | Hindu | Ruins; no public pilgrimage access for Indians as of 2026 |
| Nagarparkar Jain Temples | Tharparkar, Sindh | Jain | Heritage site; limited restoration work ongoing |
| Nankana Sahib Gurdwara | Nankana Sahib, Punjab | Sikh | Fully active; annual Gurpurab pilgrimage |
| Gurdwara Darbar Sahib | Kartarpur, Narowal | Sikh | Open; Kartarpur Corridor suspended from Indian side since May 2025; diaspora access continues |
| Gurdwara Panja Sahib | Hasan Abdal, Attock | Sikh | Active; Baisakhi pilgrimage annual |
| Gurdwara Dera Sahib | Lahore, Punjab | Sikh | Active |
Can Indians Visit These Temples in 2026?
The answer depends entirely on which temple, which faith and which moment in the political calendar. The situation in 2026 is complicated by the suspension of the Kartarpur Corridor and the broader deterioration of India-Pakistan relations following the Pahalgam attack of 2025.
For Hindu Pilgrims from India
Access to Hindu temples in Pakistan for Indian citizens falls under the 1974 Pakistan-India Protocol on Visits to Religious Shrines. Under this agreement, both governments exchange lists of religious sites and issue special pilgrimage visas to citizens of the other country to visit those sites. In practice, this is a bureaucratic process that requires applying through the appropriate diplomatic channels with considerable advance notice.
In 2022 the Pakistani High Commission granted over 400 visas to Indian Hindus to visit Pakistan's historic Hindu shrines under this protocol. In 2025, 154 Indian Hindu pilgrims received visas specifically for the Katas Raj Dham festival. These numbers are small but they demonstrate that the mechanism exists and has been used consistently even during periods of broader diplomatic tension between the two countries.
For Sikh Pilgrims from India
The Kartarpur Corridor, inaugurated in November 2019, was the most significant breakthrough for Sikh pilgrimage in seventy years. It allowed Indian Sikhs to visit Gurdwara Darbar Sahib in Kartarpur without a visa, crossing the 4.1 kilometer corridor from Dera Baba Nanak on a same-day basis. The agreement was renewed in October 2024 for a further five years.
India suspended the corridor on 7 May 2025 following the Pahalgam attack. As of early 2026, this suspension continues. Pakistani officials, including the Head Granthi of Gurdwara Darbar Sahib, have publicly expressed that Pakistan is ready to receive pilgrims and have appealed for the corridor's reopening.
Sikh pilgrims who are not Indian nationals can still access Kartarpur and other Gurdwaras in Pakistan. Indian Sikhs who hold foreign passports, for example those with Canadian, British or American citizenship, have generally been able to continue visiting through normal visa processes.
For Non-Indian Visitors and Diaspora
Pakistan has actively promoted its religious tourism potential through the PTDC five-year plan for 2024 to 2029. The World Travel and Tourism Council has estimated that Sikh tourism alone could contribute Rs 18 billion annually to Pakistan's economy and create 82,000 jobs. Approximately 7,500 Sikhs from India and 2,000 from the rest of the world make the journey to Pakistan in a typical year.
Preservation: What Pakistan Is Doing and What Still Needs Doing
The Pakistani government's record on preserving Hindu and Sikh heritage is uneven and genuinely contested. On one hand, the Evacuee Trust Property Board has undertaken restoration work at Katas Raj, Nankana Sahib and several Gurdwaras, and the Kartarpur Corridor project involved a substantial infrastructure investment. The annual Hinglaj Yatra receives active government logistical support. The PTDC plan for 2024 to 2029 explicitly targets Sikh and Buddhist religious tourism as economic opportunities.
On the other hand, civil society organizations and minority rights groups have documented consistent problems. Many Hindu temples remain in unauthorized occupation, repurposed without legal sanction. Conservation funding is inconsistent. Opposition from certain religious groups has at times blocked restoration projects, as in the case of the proposed Hindu temple in Islamabad where construction was halted after protests.
Pakistan ranked 101st out of 119 countries in the World Economic Forum's Travel and Tourism Development Index for 2024, a measure that accounts for cultural resources alongside infrastructure and policy. The gap between Pakistan's extraordinary heritage resources and its ability to leverage them for tourism remains substantial.
For the temples themselves, the most urgent threats are not political but physical. The depletion of the Katas Raj pond due to industrial groundwater extraction. The flooding damage of July 2025. The monsoon erosion affecting carved stonework across the Nagarparkar temples. Preservation in this context requires both political will and the kind of consistent technical and financial commitment that has so far been difficult to sustain.
The Emotional Geography of These Sites
There is a phrase that appears often among people who have visited these temples, whether Hindu, Sikh or simply curious: the feeling of a wound that has not entirely closed. A Sindhi Hindu family in Mumbai whose ancestors prayed at a temple in Hyderabad Sindh for generations and whose descendants have never seen that temple. A Punjabi Sikh family in Amritsar who can see, on a clear day from the right vantage point, the white dome of Kartarpur Darbar Sahib across the border but could not reach it for seven decades.
What makes these sites unusual in the history of religious architecture is that they are not ruins in the conventional sense. They are not the remains of a civilization that ended long ago. They are places separated from their primary communities by a political decision made within living memory, by a border drawn in six weeks by a British barrister named Cyril Radcliffe who had never been to India before being given the assignment.
The stone of Katas Raj absorbed the prayers of pilgrims for fifteen centuries before Partition. The cave at Hinglaj Mata has been venerated since before reliable historical records exist. Guru Nanak walked the ground at Kartarpur and died there. These facts exist entirely independently of the border, and it is in that gap between sacred geography and political geography that the emotional power of these sites resides.
Frequently Asked Questions
A Note on Visiting Responsibly
Dress modestly at all religious sites regardless of faith. Remove shoes before entering any Gurdwara or temple. At Gurdwaras, cover the head with a cloth. At Hindu temples, follow the guidance of the pujari or caretaker. Photography is generally permitted at archaeological sites like Katas Raj and the Nagarparkar temples but ask before photographing at actively functioning shrines. The communities and caretakers who maintain these places in difficult circumstances deserve that basic respect.
