REASI: A newly completed bridge towering over a rugged Himalayan gorge will soon help India tighten its grip on disputed Kashmir and counter a growing strategic threat from China.
The Chenab Railway Bridge, the highest of its kind in the world, has been hailed as an engineering feat linking the turbulent Kashmir Valley to the vast Indian plains by train for the first time.
But its completion has raised concern among some in a territory with a long history of opposition to Indian rule that already hosts a permanent garrison of more than 500,000 troops.
India's military argues that the strategic benefits of the bridge to New Delhi cannot be understated.
“The train to Kashmir will be essential in peace and in time of war,” General Deependra Singh Hooda, 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 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.
This has caused unease among some in Kashmir who believe that easier access will bring a flood of foreigners coming to buy land and settle.
Previously strict rules on land ownership were lifted after Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Hindu-nationalist government revoked Kashmir's partial autonomy in 2019.
“If the intention is to defeat the Kashmiri consciousness of its linguistic, cultural and intellectual identity or to flaunt muscular nationalism, the impact 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 history”.
It is hoped to stimulate economic development and trade by reducing the cost of moving goods.
But Hooda, the retired general, said the most important consequence of the bridge would be to revolutionize logistics in Ladakh, the frozen region bordering China.
India and China, the world's two most populous nations, are intense rivals competing for strategic influence in South Asia, and their shared 3,500-kilometer (2,200-mile) border has been a perennial source of tension.
Their troops clashed in 2020, killing at least 20 Indian and four Chinese soldiers, and forces from both sides clash today in disputed high-altitude border areas.
“Everything from a needle to the biggest military equipment… has to be sent by road and supplied to Ladakh for six months every year before the roads close for the winter,” Hooda told AFP.
Now, everything can be transported by train, facilitating what Indian military experts call “the world's largest military logistics exercise” – supplying Ladakh through snowy passes.
The project will support several other ongoing road tunnel projects 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 cold 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, the headquarters of the Army's Northern Command, and passes through the regional capital Srinagar.
It ends a kilometer higher in altitude in Baramulla, a commercial gateway town near the Line of Control with Pakistan.
When the road is open, the distance is twice as long and takes a day to drive.
The railroad cost about $3.9 billion and was a huge undertaking, with construction beginning nearly three decades ago.
While several road and pipeline bridges are taller, Guinness World Records confirmed that the Chenab surpasses the previous tallest railway bridge, the Najiehe Bridge in China.
Describing India's new bridge as a “miracle”, its deputy chief designer RR Mallick said the design and construction experience “has become a holy book for our engineers”.
