Srinagar train was decades in the making. It's set to transform security, trade, identity

The Print

4 hours ago

From Jammu through Chenani and then over the windswept, 2,382-metre Banihall Pass, Forbes, Forbes, Campbell & Co.'s engineers proposed a 150-kilometre ropeway to haul timber and iron, live animals, fruits, and vegetables. Linked to a railway line running from Srinagar to Shahabad in south Kashmir's Dooru, the project would connect Kashmir's agrarian markets to the industrial powerhouses of India.
And yet, those single-spaced pages were precisely that, a proposal to create the impossible from iron and rock.
The neat-blue typewritten manuscript from Forbes, Forbes, Campbell & Co. of Karachi arrived on the desk of Maharaja Pratap Singh of Kashmir, proposing an improbable adventure. The oldest corporate conglomerate in India, the grandees at Forbes were practical men, not given to allowing their imaginations excessive rein. Their company had grown cotton in Lyallpur, built railway lines that cut through Sindh and Mirpur, operated fleets out of Manchester, and served as bankers to the imperial government of Bombay, which later became the State Bank of India. Fantasies were not among their many lines of business.
Like so many impossible ideas, that dream was realised last week when the first train linking Katra with Srinagar traversed the Chenab Bridge, hanging 359 metres over raging waters below—the result of seventeen years of work led by the Indian Institute of Science engineering professor G Madhavi Latha—and then headed through the brand-new Banihal Tunnel.
Geography, the engineers of the age of industry at Forbes, Forbes and Campbell had, however, taught Kashmir's rulers, is not a fait-accompli. Train lines, roads, tunnels and rivers can all be transformed through technology to build new relationships between peoples and economies.
From 1921 onward, Maharaja Pratap Singh, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, his successors HD Deve Gowda, Inder Kumar Gujral, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, and Manmohan Singh all contributed to the transformation of the geographic relationship Kashmir has with the rest of India—culminating in the triumph that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has now presided over.
Also read: Not a seat left vacant as J&K's all-new Vande Bharat makes first journey from Katra to Srinagar
A turn to roads
For most of the nineteenth century, the fastest way from Srinagar to Delhi was a rutted cart road over the Banihal Pass. 'This route is reserved by HH Maharaja of Jammu and Kashmir, and no visitor can travel this way without his express permission,' sourly recorded Pratap Singh's advisor, Major-General Roul, the Marquis of Bourbel. 'When the letter is given, the traveller should arrange for the through transport of his camp and baggage from Jammu to Islamabad [Anantnag] otherwise much trouble and difficulty may be felt, the local coolies frequently putting down their loads on the roadside and running away.'
This ought to have been no surprise, of course: The labourers were slaves, forced to labour for the crown for parts of the year.
A number of ambitious railway projects were brought to the table in the late nineteenth century, but without success. SR Scott Stratten & Co. proposed, in 1898, to conduct surveys and execute the project. Engineer DA Adams proposed electric engines, but it was thought infeasible because of the elevations he proposed to traverse. In 1902, WJ Weightman suggested building a railway line along the Jhelum River. The First World War, though, put an end to these explorations.
For the most part, passengers and goods from the Kashmir Valley used the metalled and well-bridged road running through Pattan and Baramulla and through Kohala to the town of Jhelum in northern Punjab. The route was designed and delivered by Charles Spedding and his company Spedding & Co., who also built a road through the mountains linking Srinagar to the monarchy's furthest outpost in Gilgit.
The Baramulla-Jhelum road, American explorer Ellsworth Huntington reported in 1906, was the only one capable of bearing wheeled traffic. 'The roads are terrible,' Huntington complained, 'and as outside traffic is largely shut out by the mountains, beasts of burden are rare, wheeled vehicles are practically confined to the single new thoroughfare down the Jhelum, and traffic is carried on in boats, the loads being usually carried for short distances on men's backs.'
Why was this so? Through earlier centuries, historian Parvez Ahmad writes, Kashmir's trade relations focussed on markets in Central Asia, such as Samarkand, Kashgar, Bukhara, Khurasan and Yarkand. The Mughal invasion of 1586 led to the formation of linkages between Kashmiri traders and markets in the plains of Punjab and beyond. The brief period of Afghan rule, from 1753 to 1819, saw this trade collapse. However, the rise of the Dogra monarchy in 1819 led to further evolution in trade with the plains.
Led by the Kashmiri Pandit Laxman Joo Tickoo, the first qualified engineer in the state, the Maharaja also decided to develop the Banihal Cart Road as a commercial axis. The project included a tunnel at Banihal, which reduced some of the road's worst vulnerabilities to weather and made it possible for trucks to cross the pass into Jammu and on to Pathankot. There is no evidence in the historical record that the Maharaja had strategic considerations on his mind, but the Dogra state now had a second, fateful highway curling through its territories.
The expansion of road and rail projects needed money, and the monarchy didn't have it. The revenues of Rs 27.7 million in 1939 had a substantial amount of Rs 4 million deducted by the Maharaja and his private departments. Another Rs 5 million was spent on what was to prove a woefully underequipped army. Little was left for infrastructure.
In 1947, the Maharaja's successor, Hari Singh, fled Srinagar as his army collapsed in the face of an invasion by Pakistani irregulars. Indian troops were able to use this road to support Indian Army special forces who had been airdropped to save the state.
A blueprint for freedom
From the 1930s, the economist and political activist Prithvi Nath Dhar—later to head Prime Minister Indira Gandhi's secretariat—had begun to think through what Kashmir's accession to India might look like. The one possible rail line, he wrote in a 1951 note, would have been through Banihal, as the Forbes, Forbes, Campbell & Co. report had made clear. 'Thus, if Kashmir develops her railway communications, a much closer integration with India will be possible, and her comparative isolation, brought about by the high mountain ranges of the Himalayas, broken.'
The technology and resources of the time, though, meant a project of this kind just wasn't feasible. The Government focussed, instead, on boring a new tunnel to replace Laxman Joo's old one, and work was completed in 1956. The Army also invested in upgrading the cart road to one that met the needs of the giant logistical chain leading up to what was then called the Ceasefire Line.
Even more important, though, was Dhar's revelation that the severance of trade links with Panjab would have few consequences—if alternative routes were available. Trade with Panjab, through hubs like Lahore, rose both in volume and value from Rs 40,442 in 1900-01 to Rs 1,53,35,877 in 1925-26. This was mainly composed of finished cotton, dyes, gunny bags, liquor, metals, oils, grain, tea, and tobacco.
To Punjab, Kashmir sent live animals, timber, herbal drugs, fruits, vegetables, pulses, hides and skins, as well as opium and charas—then traded legally.
For Dhar, it seemed that the agricultural economy of Kashmir and the industrial economy of India complemented each other perfectly. Much of what Kashmir needed was just being routed through Punjab, not made there. Linking Kashmir to the broader Indian market would yield substantial profits for its farmers. All that was needed was a secure logistical system. Kashmir had to be related to India with iron and concrete, not soldiers and bullets.
Also read: India needs to focus on winning in Kashmir, not fighting Pakistan
The final push
The idea of a railroad, though, never quite went away. In this, there was remarkable strategic coherence that cut across successive governments. Prime Minister Deve Gowda laid a foundation stone for the railway line in 1996, at a time when it seemed impossible to assemble workers and protect them from assault. A year later, Prime Minister IK Gujral laid another foundation stone. In 2002, the project was declared one of national importance, freeing it from the limitations of the railway's budget.
The big impacts of the railway line, when it is fully functional, will be visible in cities across India: Fruit will be transported far more cheaply and efficiently, the movement of ghee and spices like saffron will be better organised, and new Kashmiri products like high-end cheese will find markets.
Less noticed, the compression of space will bring about profound cultural changes. The new train will enable easy day trips between Kashmir and Jammu, two cities divided not only by religion, ethnicity, and culture but also by the bitter history of Partition and the Pir Panjal Mountain range. The impact of this cultural change ought not to be underestimated—because we know that's just what happened earlier.
Travelling on the new highway their father had built, Laxman Joo Tickoo's sons went to Mumbai to learn engineering. They discovered new ideas instead. Lambodar Nath Tickoo, the eldest son, decided to become a tailor and set up a high-end bespoke business in Srinagar. Local Pandit conservatives derided the young rebel for engaging in work below his caste status—but the profits from Navyug Tailors soon silenced the critics.
Kashmir's railway story reveals essential aspects of what India has achieved in the state, which often receives insufficient attention. Instead of developing its rail network, Pakistan currently lacks a single electrified line, which reduces the efficiency of its system. Large numbers of railway stations in the country's North-West have simply been abandoned. Islamabad also failed to push through a railway line to Kandahar and the north, which would have enabled it to dominate trade in parts of Central Asia.
The war India really needs to win is to make Kashmir's people secure, prosperous partners in the project of India. To this end, each journey on the new train will bring us just a little closer.
Praveen Swami is contributing editor at ThePrint. His X handle is @praveenswami. Views are personal.
(Edited by Theres Sudeep)