REASI: A newly completed bridge towering high over a gorge in the rugged Himalayas will soon help India consolidate control over disputed Kashmir and counter a growing strategic threat from China.
The Chenab Railway Bridge, the tallest of its kind in the world, has been hailed as an engineering feat that connects the troubled Kashmir Valley with the vast plains of India for the first time by train.
But its completion has raised concerns among some in the territory, which has a long history of resistance to Indian rule and is already home to a permanent garrison of more than 500,000 troops.
Indian military officials say the strategic benefits of the bridge to Delhi cannot be understated.
“The train to Kashmir will be crucial in peace and war,” Gen. Deependra Singh Hooda, retired former head of India's North Indian military command, told AFP.
Muslim-majority Kashmir is at the center of a bitter rivalry between India and Pakistan, which have been divided since independence from British rule in 1947, and the nuclear-armed neighbors have fought wars over it.
Insurgent groups have also led a 35-year-long insurgency demanding independence for the territory or its merger with Pakistan.
The new bridge will “facilitate the movement of army personnel who come and go in larger numbers than was previously possible,” said Noor Ahmad Baba, professor of politics at the Central University of Kashmir.
But as well as soldiers, the bridge will “facilitate the movement” of ordinary people and goods, he told AFP.
That has sparked unease among some in Kashmir, who believe easier access will bring a wave of foreigners coming to buy land and settle.
Previously strict rules on land ownership were lifted after the Hindu-nationalist government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi revoked Kashmir's partial autonomy in 2019.
“If the intention is to defeat Kashmiri awareness of its linguistic, cultural and intellectual identity or to show muscular nationalism, the impact will be negative,” historian Sidiq Wahid told AFP.
India Railways calls the $24 million bridge “probably the biggest construction challenge faced by any railway project in India in recent history”.
It is expected to promote economic development and trade and reduce the cost of moving goods.
But Hooda, a retired general, said the most important consequence of the bridge would be a revolution in logistics in Ladakh, an icy region bordering China.
India and China, the world's two most populous countries, are intense rivals competing for strategic influence across South Asia, and their 3,500-kilometer (2,200-mile) shared border is a perennial source of tension.
Their troops clashed in 2020, killing at least 20 Indian and four Chinese soldiers, and forces from both sides today face off across the disputed high-altitude border.
“Everything from a needle to the biggest military equipment… has to be sent by road and stored in Ladakh for six months every year before the roads close for the winter,” Hooda told AFP.
Now, anything that can be transported by train facilitates what Indian military experts call “the world's largest military logistics exercise” – the supply of Ladakh through snow-covered passes.
The project will support several other ongoing road tunnel projects that will connect Kashmir and Ladakh near India's borders with China and Pakistan.
The 1,315-meter-long steel and concrete bridge connects the two mountains in an arch of 359 meters above the cool waters of the Chenab River.
The trains are ready to run and are just waiting for the expected ribbon cutting by Modi.
The 272-kilometer railway begins in the garrison town of Udhampur, the headquarters of the Army's Northern Command, and runs through the regional capital Srinagar.
It ends a kilometer up at Baramulla, a gateway trading town near the Line of Control with Pakistan.
When the road is open, it is double the distance and takes a day's drive.
Costing an estimated $3.9 billion, the railroad was a massive undertaking whose construction began nearly three decades ago.
While several road and pipeline bridges are taller, the Guinness Book of World Records has confirmed that the Chenab has surpassed the previous tallest railway bridge, the Najiehe Bridge in China.
His deputy chief engineer RR Mallick described India's new bridge as a “miracle” and said the experience of designing and building it “has become a holy book for our engineers”.
