K N Pandita
The epithet “land locked” has remained a permanent attribute of the geographical entity called the State of Jammu and Kashmir (now UT). That is what the underbelly of the great Himalayas is; the epithet is rightly coined by historians and geographers. The mountainous gird-lock has been a boon and a curse both for the people of this fabulous land.
It is a boon because it provides perennial water – the life line of agrarian populace and fertile valleys and verdant dales —, and it protects the land from icy winds and blizzards coming from the Siberian archipelago.
But it is not true to say that the great Himalayas protected the luxuriant Kashmir valley against the incursions and rapacity of the wild and fearful nomads from the great Central Asian Steppes. No, the Himalayas did not. The rapacious Turushkas (of Rajatarangini) meaning the Turkistan hordes and hordes from so many tribes in Central Asia including the Mongols and Tartars invaded Kashmir from time to time to disrupt life in the quiet and drowsy valley. That is the reason why two Kashmirian kings namely Lalitaditya (724 CE-760 CE) and Sultan Shihabu’d Din (1354-1373 CE) carried out expeditions deep in the Central Asian and Tibetan regions to chastise the rapacious groups and warriors of those regions so that they do not dare to repeat the incursions into Kashmir.
However, the Himalayan mountain ranges encircling Kashmir forced the local people from establishing regular contacts with the people and their societies that lay and flourished outside the mountainous ramparts. The Kashmiris remained isolated for centuries. It created in them a sense of isolationists and separatists. It was a life of self-sufficiency which, in historical and circumstantial sense is not without periodical perils like natural calamities, famines, floods, and other forms of devastation. This isolationist module created few negative aspects in their character. They suspected everything and anything that came from outside the mountain fortification.
I am not going into the politics of the region. I confine to connectivity. The routes leading to the world outside the valley were tortuous, full of hazards and forbidding. Anybody proceeding on travel to any part of the Punjab was almost dead to his home people and in many cases his death rituals would be performed assuming that he would never return due to the perils of a dangerous travel.
During the times of the Sultan and the Mughals, Pathans and Sikhs the route mostly used for entry into Kashmir was what we today call the Mughal Road which has been upgraded, macadamized and made transportable in recent years. But when the Dogras conquered Kashmir in about 1845-46, they used the Srinagar – Rawalpindi route generally called Jhelum Valley Road. Simultaneously, they opened the cart road via Banihal to Jammu. Gradually this road became motorable. Even then, the maximum traffic was conducted along the JV Road which was much more dependable and safe than BC Road.
In 1947, when India was divided, the Maharaja of Kashmir signed a standstill agreement with the newly formed domain of Pakistan. One of the important reasons for the Maharaja to conclude a standstill agreement was the road connectivity which mean the then existing JV Road. But Pakistan broke the standstill agreement within a month and with that JV Road came to a final end never to open again.
From 1947 up to this day in 2023, the ancient Banihal Cart Road, now turned into four-lane highway through the hills and gorges remained the only link of Kashmir with the world outside. This road is over rocky as well as sandy mountains with loose soil. With a little shower in summer or winter these mounts allow huge chunks of soil and stones slip down and block the road for days at end. The road blocks during rainy season have become a routine resulting in blockade of the highway which is the life line for the people of the valley and Ladakh region. Road blockade is a serious blow to easy flow of economy and tourism.
Ultimately, the policy planners in New Delhi thought of providing railway connectivity to Kashmir valley with Jammu and the rest of the country. Great discussions and proposals to bring Kashmir Valle on the rail map of India were held and finally it was decided to conduct a survey of the entire topography that could be considered feasible for laying railway line. The railway had already come to Udhampur and Katra, and the most difficult area through which the railway would pass lay ahead in Reasi district. The survey showed that there would be the need of a railway bridge over the River Chandrabhaga or Chenab that passed through deep gorges of the Pir Panchal and Shivalik ranges.
A formidable task lay before the Indian policy planners and engineers. Neither the track between Udhampur and Banihal was easy nor was the building of railway bridges over the Chenab less than a miracle. But hats off to the dedicated and patriotic engineers of highest calibre that we have, they examined the site, discussed among them. They invited advice from some top engineering companies of the world, especially those in Switzerland and Austria. These discussions went on for more than two years before a blue print of the bridge would be approved for financing.
The highest railway bridge in the world will become functional in January 2024 as the trial ride has been successfully completed a few days ago with the Union Railways Minister Piyush Goyal along with the Chief Engineer of the project riding the trolley. 359 meters above the Chenab River bed Chenab Bridge is 30 meters higher than the Eiffel tower of France. It forms a crucial link in the 111-km stretch from Katra to Banihal. More than 300 engineers and 1,300 workers worked round the clock to complete the bridge started in 2004 and completed a decade later. Its central span is 467 meters and the length is 1.315 km. The crucial bridge has been built at a cost of 1,486 crore rupees equal to USD 190 million. The ridge will have life span of 120 years. Special care had to be taken to protect the structure from strong winds. It is designed to withstand zone V earthquake and the speed up to 266 km per hour of the wind.
What does this marvellous engineering feat, this amount of labour and the funding mean? It speaks more than what we understand. It represents the will and determination of the Indian State to provide all round development of all parts of the country. It brings the people in distant parts of the country, north, south, east and west closer to one another so that their interaction becomes brisk and the national integration is achieved in all its forms and manifestations. It helps make India one nation and a great nation.
For the UT of Jammu and Kashmir it has a special message. As an integral part of the Indian Union, J&K has been pulled out of millennia after millennia of isolation, separation and exclusion. It shreds the artificially created notion of kashmiriyat to shreds, and opens vistas of great prosperity and development of the beautiful land of Kashmir. The bridge will be of immense value to the creation of a new generation of Kashmiris with a world vision and also a vision of the greatness of their country. The bridge will be an invitation for departure from centuries of obscurantism, fanaticism and xenophobia.
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