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Soaring high across a gorge in the rugged Himalayas, a newly completed bridge will soon help India strengthen its control over disputed Kashmir and address a rising strategic threat from China.
The Chenab Rail Bridge, the highest of its kind in the world, has been lauded as an engineering marvel, linking the restive Kashmir valley to the vast Indian plains by train for the first time.
However, its completion has raised concerns among some in a region with a long history of resisting Indian rule, which already hosts a permanent garrison of over 500,000 soldiers.
Indias military officials emphasize the strategic significance of the bridge for New Delhi. "The train to Kashmir will be pivotal in peace and in wartime," General Deependra Singh Hooda, a retired former chief of Indias northern military command, told AFP.
Muslim-majority Kashmir remains at the center of a bitter rivalry between India and Pakistan, divided between them since independence from British rule in 1947, with the nuclear-armed neighbors having fought wars over it. Rebel groups have also waged a 35-year-long insurgency demanding either independence for the territory or its merger 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, as well as soldiers, the bridge will also "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 lead to a surge of outsiders coming to buy land and settle. Previously stringent rules on land ownership were lifted after Prime Minister Narendra Modis Hindu-nationalist government revoked Kashmirs partial autonomy in 2019.
"If the intent is to browbeat the Kashmiri consciousness of its linguistic, cultural, and intellectual identity, or to put muscular nationalism on display, the impact will be negative," historian Sidiq Wahid told AFP. |
