India's new controversial railway bridge closes gap to Kashmir

Soaring high across a gorge in the rugged Himalayas, a newly finished bridge will soon help India entrench control of disputed Kashmir and meet a rising strategic threat from China.

The Chenab Rail Bridge, the highest of its kind in the world, has been hailed as a feat of engineering linking the restive Kashmir valley to the vast Indian plains by train for the first time.

But its completion has sparked concern among some in a territory with a long history of opposing Indian rule, already home to a permanent garrison of more than 500,000 soldiers.

India's military brass say the strategic benefits of the bridge to New Delhi cannot be understated.

"The train to Kashmir will be pivotal in peace and in wartime," General Deependra Singh Hooda, a retired former chief of India's northern military command, said.

Muslim-majority Kashmir is at the centre of a bitter rivalry between India and Pakistan, divided between them since independence from British rule in 1947, and the nuclear-armed neighbours have fought wars over it.

Armed opposition groups have also waged a 35-year-long insurgency demanding independence for the territory or its merger with Pakistan.

Unease among some in Kashmir

The new bridge "will facilitate the movement of army personnel coming and going 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 "facilitate movement" of ordinary people and goods, he said.

That has prompted unease among some in Kashmir who believe easier access will bring a surge of outsiders coming to buy land and settle.

Previously tight rules on land ownership were lifted after Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Hindu-nationalist government cancelled Kashmir's 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 said.

'Biggest military logistics exercise'

India Railways calls the $24 million bridge "arguably the biggest civil engineering challenge faced by any railway project in India in recent history".

It is hoped to boost economic development and trade, cutting the cost of moving goods.

But Hooda, the retired general, said the bridge's most important consequence would be revolutionising logistics in Ladakh, the icy region bordering China.

India and China, the world's two most populous nations, are intense rivals competing for strategic influence across South Asia, and their 3,500-kilometre (2,200-mile) shared frontier has been a perennial source of tension.

Now all that can be transported by train, easing what Indian military experts call the "world's biggest military logistics exercise" — supplying Ladakh through snowbound passes.