REASI: Towering over a gorge in the rugged Himalayas, a newly completed bridge will soon help India consolidate control of disputed Kashmir and confront 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 rail for the first time.
But its completion has raised concerns among some in a territory with a long history of opposition to Indian rule and that already hosts a permanent garrison of more than 500,000 troops.
Indian military officials say the strategic benefits of the bridge to New Delhi cannot be underestimated.
“The Kashmir train will be crucial in both peacetime and wartime,” General Deependra Singh Hooda, retired chief of India's Northern Command, told AFP.
Kashmir, a Muslim-majority territory, is at the centre of a bitter rivalry between India and Pakistan, divided since independence from British rule in 1947, and the two nuclear-armed neighbours have fought wars for control.
Rebel groups have also waged a 35-year insurgency, demanding the territory's independence or merger with Pakistan.
The new bridge “will facilitate the movement of incoming and outgoing army personnel in greater numbers than was previously possible,” said Noor Ahmad Baba, a professor of politics at the Central University of Kashmir.
But beyond soldiers, the bridge will “facilitate the movement” of ordinary people and goods, he told AFP.
This has raised unease among some Kashmiris, who believe that easier access will lead to a wave of foreigners arriving to buy land and settle there.
Previously strict land ownership rules were lifted after Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Hindu nationalist government scrapped Kashmir's partial autonomy in 2019.
“Whether the intent is to intimidate Kashmiri consciousness of its linguistic, cultural and intellectual identity, or to showcase muscular nationalism, the impact will be negative,” historian Sidiq Wahid told AFP.
Indian 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 transporting goods.
But Hooda, a retired general, said the bridge's most important consequence would be a logistics revolution in Ladakh, the icy region bordering China.
India and China, the world's two most populous nations, are bitter rivals vying for strategic influence in South Asia, and their shared 3,500-kilometer (2,200-mile) border is a perennial source of tension.
Their troops clashed in 2020, killing at least 20 Indian and four Chinese soldiers, and today forces from both sides are facing off along 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 the winter,” Hooda told AFP.
Now all of this can be transported by train, facilitating what Indian military experts call “the world’s largest military logistics exercise”: resupplying Ladakh through snow-covered passes.
The project will strengthen several other ongoing road tunnel projects linking 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 a 359-meter-high arch over the cool waters of the Chenab River.
The trains are ready to depart and are just waiting for Modi to cut the ribbon.
The 272-kilometer-long railway begins in the garrison town of Udhampur, headquarters of the army's northern command, and passes through the regional capital, Srinagar.
It ends a kilometre further up, at Baramulla, a commercial gateway town near the Line of Control with Pakistan.
When the road is open, the distance is double and it takes a day's driving.
The railroad cost an estimated $3.9 billion and was a monumental undertaking, with construction beginning nearly three decades ago.
Although several road and pipeline bridges are taller, Guinness World Records confirmed that Chenab surpasses the previous tallest railway bridge, the Najiehe Bridge in China.
Describing India's new bridge as a “marvel”, its deputy chief designer R.R. Mallick said the design and construction experience “has become a holy book for our engineers”.
