REASI: A newly built bridge, soaring 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 Rail Bridge, the tallest of its kind in the world, has been hailed as an engineering feat that connects the restful Kashmir Valley with the vast Indian plains by rail for the first time.
But its completion has raised concerns among some in a territory with a long history of resistance to Indian rule, already home to a permanent garrison of more than 500,000 troops.
India's military says the strategic benefits of the bridge to New Delhi cannot be understated.
“The train to Kashmir will be central in peace and in wartime,” General Deependra Singh Hooda, a retired former head of India's Northern Military Command, told AFP.
Muslim-majority Kashmir is at the center of a bitter rivalry between India and Pakistan, divided between them since independence from British rule in 1947, and the nuclear-armed neighbors have fought wars over it.
Rebel groups have also waged a 35-year insurgency demanding independence for the territory or its merger with Pakistan.
The new bridge “will facilitate the movement of army personnel coming and going in larger numbers than was previously possible,” said Noor Ahmad Baba, professor of politics at the Central University of Kashmir.
But, like soldiers, the bridge will “facilitate the movement” of ordinary people and goods, he told AFP.
That has led to concern among some in Kashmir who believe that easier access will lead to a wave of outsiders coming to buy land and settle.
Previously tight rules on land ownership were lifted after Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Hindu nationalist government suspended Kashmir's partial autonomy in 2019.
“If the intention is to strike Kashmir's consciousness of its linguistic, cultural and intellectual identity, or to display muscular nationalism, the effect will be negative,” historian Sidiq Wahid told AFP.
India Railways calls the $24 million bridge “probably the biggest civil engineering challenge faced by any railway project in India in recent times.”
It is hoped to increase economic development and trade and reduce the cost of moving goods.
But Hooda, the retired general, said the bridge's most important impact would be to revolutionize logistics in Ladakh, the icy region bordering China.
India and China, the world's two most populous nations, are intense rivals competing for strategic influence across South Asia, and their 3,500-kilometer (2,200-mile) shared border has been a constant source of tension.
Their troops clashed in 2020, killing at least 20 Indian and four Chinese soldiers, and forces from both sides clash today over disputed high-altitude border areas.
“Everything from a needle to the largest military equipment… has to be shipped by road and stored in Ladakh for six months every year before the roads close for winter,” Hooda told AFP.
Now, everything that can be transported can be transported by train, facilitating what Indian military experts call “the world's largest military logistics exercise” – supplying Ladakh through snow-bound passes.
The project will support several other road tunnel projects underway that will connect Kashmir and Ladakh, not far from India's borders with China and Pakistan.
The 1,315 meter long steel and concrete bridge connects two mountains with an arch 359 meters above the cool waters of the Chenab River.
The trains are ready to run and are just waiting for an expected ribbon cutting from Modi.
The 272-kilometer railway begins in the garrison town of Udhampur, headquarters of the Army's Northern Command, and passes through the regional capital Srinagar.
It ends one kilometer higher in altitude in Baramulla, a trading town near the border line with Pakistan.
When the road is open, it is twice as long and takes a day's driving.
The railroad cost an estimated $3.9 billion and has been a massive undertaking, with construction beginning nearly three decades ago.
While several road and pipeline bridges are higher, Guinness World Records confirmed that the Chenab trumps the previous tallest railway bridge, the Najiehe Bridge in China.
Its deputy chief designer RR Mallick described India's new bridge as a “miracle”, saying the experience of designing and building it “has become a holy book for our engineers.”
