Months since Op Sindoor, Jammu border community recalls days of crisis

India's border with Pakistan along which the May conflict took place in Jammu and Kashmir is one of the most complicated boundaries of the world. Partly international and partly disputed, this year the border experienced a new warfare, a new normal and a fresh need for trauma care.

- VENUS UPADHAYAYA

In this special report based on an August trip to Akhnoor region of Jammu border stretch, the community in a village called Sungal for the first time publicly talked about their experience of the war and its aftermath.

Akhnoor is a town on the bank of the river Chenab that temporarily went dry after India suspended its participation from the Indus Water Treaty and closed a dam uphill for a few hours on May 5. Chenab is one of the major trans-boundary rivers of the Indus river basin.

Akhnoor is also the region where India's International Border with Pakistan ends and the disputed border called Line of Control (LoC) begins. It thus has a huge deployment of military on both sides.

Akhoor is a nodal point on the ancient route to Kashmir and further to Central Asia called the Mughal route.

At Akhnoor on the bank of Chenab is the northern most precinct of Harappan civilization in India. About two miles from this archaeological site is another 7th century Buddhist site called Ambaran on Chenab's bank.

But this ancient pedigree doesn't sanctify the place's identity in independent India. It was always the war that identified it—first 1947, then 1965, then 1971, another in 1999 and now 2025.

The border residents, including a few community leaders and several community members, said in a specially arranged group discussion on August 8 that the May conflict reflects a change in warfare.

Shyam Lal Sharma, the chairman of SAMAH Devta Food and Agriculture Organization (FPO), a cooperative of 800 farmers from the adjoining border regions was born in 1954 and has witnessed all wars between India and Pakistan except for the war that happened immediately after the partition.

"Earlier wars used to be such that Pakistan would cross over to our side or we would march over to their side," explained Sharma adding that the cross border firing happened briefly but the border didn't face tension, the way it faced in the earlier wars.