Riasi: A newly completed bridge that soars through a valley in the rugged Himalayas will soon help India consolidate control over disputed Kashmir and counter the growing strategic threat from China.
The Chenab Rail Bridge, the highest of its kind in the world, has been hailed as an engineering feat that will connect the restive Kashmir valley to the vast plains of India for the first time by train.
But its completion has worried some in the territory with a long history of opposition to Indian rule, which is already home to a permanent garrison of more than 500,000 troops.
Indian military officials say the strategic benefits of the bridge to New Delhi cannot be understated.
“The train to Kashmir will be pivotal in peacetime and wartime,” General Dipendra Singh Hooda, retired former chief of the Indian Army's Northern Command, told AFP.
Muslim-majority Kashmir is at the center of a bitter rivalry between India and Pakistan, which has been divided between them since independence from British rule in 1947, and the nuclear-armed neighbors have fought over it.
Rebel groups have also waged a 35-year-old insurgency, demanding independence for the territory or its merger with Pakistan.
Noor Ahmad Baba, professor of politics at the Central University of Kashmir, said the new bridge would “facilitate the movement of army personnel in larger numbers than was previously possible”.
But in addition to soldiers, the bridge will facilitate the movement of civilians and goods, he told AFP.
This has upset some in Kashmir, who believe that easier access will encourage foreigners to buy land and settle there.
Earlier strict laws on land ownership were lifted after the Hindu nationalist government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi revoked Kashmir's partial autonomy in 2019.
“If the aim is to defeat the Kashmiri consciousness of its linguistic, cultural and intellectual identity, or to display muscular nationalism, the effect will be negative,” historian Sadiq Waheed told AFP.
The Indian Railways calls the $24 million bridge “the biggest civil engineering challenge that any railway project in India has faced in recent history”.
It is hoped to boost 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 to revolutionize logistics in Ladakh, the icy region bordering China.
India and China, the world's two most populous nations, are fierce rivals vying for strategic influence across South Asia, and their 3,500-kilometer border has been a constant source of tension.
Their forces clashed in 2020, killing at least 20 Indian soldiers and four Chinese soldiers, and troops from both sides today clashed across border areas in the highlands.
“Everything from a needle to the largest military equipment… has to be sent by road and stored in Ladakh for six months every year until the roads are closed for winter,” Hooda told AFP.
Everything can now be transported by train, facilitating what Indian military experts call “the world's largest military logistics exercise” — supplying Ladakh through snow passes.
The project supports several other road tunnel projects connecting Kashmir and Ladakh near India's borders with China and Pakistan.
The 1315-meter steel and concrete bridge connects two mountains with a 359-meter arch above the cool waters of the Chenab River.
The trains are ready to go and are just waiting for Modi's much awaited ribbon cutting.
The 272-km railway starts from the barracks town of Udhampur, the headquarters of the Army's Northern Command, and passes through Srinagar, the regional capital.
It ends a kilometer higher in Baramulla, a commercial gateway town near the Line of Control with Pakistan.
When the road is open it is twice the distance and takes a day's drive.
The construction cost of this railway line is estimated at 3.9 billion dollars and it was a very big work and its construction started about three decades ago.
While several road and pipeline bridges are higher, Guinness World Records confirmed that the Chenab surpasses the previous highest railway bridge, the Najiehe Bridge in China.
RR Mallick, deputy designer of New India Bridge, described the new India bridge as a “wonder” and said the experience of designing and building it “has become a bible for our engineers.”
