REASI: High above a gorge in the rugged Himalayas stands a newly completed bridge that will soon help India consolidate control over disputed Kashmir and counter a growing strategic threat from China.
The Chenab Railway Bridge, the highest of its kind in the world, is hailed as an engineering feat as it is the first to connect the troubled Kashmir Valley with the vast Indian plains by rail.
But the completion of construction has raised concerns in an area with a long history of resistance to Indian rule and already a permanent garrison of more than 500,000 troops.
The Indian military leadership believes that the strategic benefit of the bridge to New Delhi should not be underestimated.
“The Kashmir train will be crucial in peacetime and wartime,” General Deependra Singh Hooda, a retired former commander of India's Northern Military Command, told AFP.
Muslim-majority Kashmir is at the centre of a bitter rivalry between India and Pakistan. The two countries have been divided since independence from British rule in 1947, and the two nuclear-armed neighbours have fought wars over it.
In addition, rebel groups have been waging an insurgency for 35 years, demanding the region's independence or its unification with Pakistan.
The new bridge “will facilitate the movement of army personnel in larger numbers than was previously possible,” said Noor Ahmad Baba, a politics professor at the Central University of Kashmir.
But the bridge will not only make it easier for soldiers to “move around” ordinary people and goods, he told AFP.
This has caused unease among some Kashmiris, who fear that easier access will lead to a rush of foreigners coming to buy land and settle down.
Previously strict land ownership rules were lifted after Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Hindu nationalist government revoked Kashmir's partial autonomy in 2019.
“If the intention is to suppress Kashmiris' awareness of their linguistic, cultural and intellectual identity or to display strong nationalism, the impact will be negative,” historian Sidiq Wahid told AFP.
India Railways describes the $24 million bridge as “probably the greatest engineering challenge faced by a railway project in India in recent history.”
It is hoped that this will stimulate economic development and trade and reduce the costs of transporting goods.
But Hooda, the retired general, said the most important impact of the bridge's construction would be a revolutionary logistics revolution in Ladakh, the icy border region with China.
India and China, the world's two most populous countries, are bitter rivals, competing for strategic influence in South Asia. Their 3,500-kilometer-long border is a constant source of tension.
In 2020, their troops clashed, killing at least 20 Indian and four Chinese soldiers. Today, forces from both sides face each other in contested high-altitude border areas.
“Everything from needles to the largest military equipment has to be transported by road and stored in Ladakh for six months every year before the roads are closed for winter,” Hooda told AFP.
Now all this can be transported by rail, facilitating what Indian military experts call “the world’s largest military logistics exercise” – supplying Ladakh across snow-covered 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 bridge made of steel and concrete connects two mountains with an arch 359 meters above the cool waters of the Chenab River.
The trains are ready to run and only have to wait for the expected opening by Modi.
The 272-kilometer-long railway begins in the garrison town of Udhampur, the headquarters of the Army's Northern Command, and passes through the regional capital of Srinagar.
It ends one kilometre higher in Baramulla, an important trading town near the Line of Control with Pakistan.
When the road is open, the distance is twice as long and the journey takes a day.
The railroad cost an estimated $3.9 billion and construction began nearly three decades ago.
While several road and pipeline bridges are taller, Guinness World Records confirmed that Chenab surpasses the previous tallest railway bridge, the Najiehe Bridge in China.
Deputy chief designer RR Mallick called India's new bridge a “miracle” and said the experience of designing and building it had “become a kind of holy book for our engineers.”
