Battle at the Top of the World.

INDIA AND PAKISTAN CLASH OVER A MOUNTAIN PARADISE, TAKING THEIR 50-YEAR-OLD CONFLICT TO NEW EXTREMES

The Valley of Kashmir in northern India, where long green valleys cut through some of the world's tallest mountain peaks, has long been famed for lotus blossoms floating in crystal blue lakes and dazzling yellow mustard fields. For centuries, its name was equated with stunning beauty and serenity.

But today, there is trouble in paradise. The summer capital of Srinagar is dotted with sandbag bunkers. Guntoting soldiers train their rifles on passersby. And as India and Pakistan fight over this land, a carnival of killing routinely mocks the region's legendary tranquillity--people are blown apart, ambushed, caught in crossfire, or snatched and never seen again.

"If only we could turn back the clock," laments Irfan Maqsood, a 21-year-old Srinagar student. "The fighting goes on and on, and for what?"

For half a century, largely Hindu India and mostly Muslim Pakistan have made Kashmir the object of a rivalry as venomous as any in the world. During the past decade alone, the fighting has claimed at least 24,000 lives by India's official count, and perhaps as many as 70,000. For years, grenade and mortar attacks in Kashmir barely made world news reports But two years ago, India and Pakistan both successfully tested nuclear bombs. Today, a sudden escalation of hostilities could have apocalyptic consequences. Together, the two nations have more than 1.1 billion people, about one sixth of the world's population.

Recent events have only increased pressures. In early October, a coalition led by a Hindu nationalist party that takes a hard line on Pakistan won control of India's government for the second time. A week later, Pakistan's prime minister was deposed in a military coup. In December, five guerrillas hijacked an Indian jetliner, forcing India to free three militants who oppose India's presence in Kashmir. Next month, President Clinton plans to visit the region in hopes of easing tensions. But he will be trying to undo a cycle of violence that has deep roots.

India and Pakistan have been enemies since they were both carved out of British India in 1947. Rioting broke out even before independence day, with Muslims, Hindus, and Sikhs involved in killing rampages that would take hundreds of thousands of lives. The two nations have since fought three all-out wars.

CAUGHT IN THE MIDDLE

Kashmir, parts of which are controlled by India, Pakistan, and China, has been caught in the middle. The Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir, almost the size of Tennessee, is two-thirds Muslim. Pakistan has always insisted that Kashmiris be allowed to vote on whether they want to be part of India or Pakistan, but India has refused to allow such a vote. When a small Kashmiri independence movement took up arms in the early 1990s, Pakistan immediately backed the rebels, and fighting has troubled the region ever since.

"We want to stand up and say to them both, `Thank you for loving us, but spare us the honor of being your battleground,'" says Muzafar Baig, a prominent lawyer.

One battleground more than any other reflects the intransigence of this conflict. The Siachen (SEE-yah-chen) Glacier is a barren sheet of ice 46 miles long, 18,000 feet high in the Himalaya mountains. Surrounded by stupendous towers of snow, with temperatures dipping to 50 below, the glacier is of questionable strategic importance.

FIGHTING THE ELEMENTS

But in 1984, the Indian army moved in, and Pakistani forces rushed in to oppose it. Ever since, the two countries have been fighting what's often been called the war on the roof of the world. In the vast, snowy whiteness, the enemy is hard to see, and even harder to hit. Rifles must be thawed repeatedly over kerosene stoves, and machine guns need to be primed with boiling water. Mortar shells fly unpredictable and extraordinary distances, swerving erratically when hit by sledgehammer gusts. While some troops fall to hostile fire, far more perish from avalanches and false steps into ice chasms that nature has camouflaged with snow.

"This is like a struggle of two bald men over a comb," says Stephen Cohen, an authority on South Asia at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank. "Siachen is the epitome of the worst aspects of the relationship."

Nearly 16 years of refrigerated combat have produced only stalemate, as the Pakistanis below cannot get up to India's advantageous high ground and the Indians on top cannot come down. "Nobody can win, no matter how long we fight," says Major General V.S. Budhwar, the Indian commander in the region. "But this is our land. It is a portion of our nation-state, and we will not cede it."

"Siachen is an awful place," admits General Khalid Mahmud Arif, the retired former vice chief of Pakistan's military. "But no nation ever wants to lose a single inch of territory, so Siachen has psychological and political importance. Its value is in ego and prestige."

It is precisely that kind of thinking that has people worrying over the conflict between the world's two newest nuclear powers.

"My fear is that at some point, the Pakistanis will be tempted to up the ante," says George Perkovich, author of India's Nuclear Bomb. "Somebody blows up something big and India says, `That's it,' and takes out targets. Who's going to back down?"

RELATED ARTICLE: Gandhi's Forgotten Legacy

As India and Pakistan trade threats-and back them up with arsenals of atom bombs-many Indians say the peaceful, nonviolent India imagined by its founding statesman has been forgotten.

That founder, Mohandas K. Gandhi, dedicated his life to the notion that peaceful resistance is the best answer to violence. Armed only with his belief, and owning no more than a book of songs, a pocket watch, and a few personal items, he overthrew the British rule of India.

Born in 1869, Gandhi felt the slap of prejudice as a young man when he was ordered to the baggage car with other people of color during a train trip in South Africa. He refused and was tossed off the train. The moment was a turning point. Gandhi began organizing and speaking at rallies in South Africa, spreading a radical new message of nonviolent resistance. He told his followers they must be willing to go to jail or accept beatings to make their point. But they should never retaliate. "An eye for an eye, and soon the whole world is blind," he said.

Gandhi won major victories for South Africa's large Indian population, and returned to India a hero in 1915. His followers began to call him Mahatma--"great soul."

THE FORCE OF CONSCIENCE

At home, Gandhi adopted the life of the poor. From a small hut, where he tended fruit trees and wove his own cloth, he organized resistance to Britain, which had colonized India in 1858.

The strikes and boycotts he led landed him in jail for a total of seven years. The dangers of resistance reached a high point on April 13, 1919, when British troops opened fire on unarmed demonstrators, killing nearly 400 Indians and wounding 1,200.

Gandhi never gave up. He organized more boycotts and strikes, finally winning independence for India in 1947.

Unfortunately, Gandhi, a Hindu, was never able to heal the hatred between Muslims and Hindus in India. When India won independence, the Muslim population broke away to create the separate nation of Pakistan. Religious riots broke out in which nearly a million died. "Before Hindus and Muslims dare think of freedom," he said, "they must be brave enough to love one another, to tolerate one another's religion."

But on January 30, 1948, a Hindu nationalist, angered by Gandhi's tolerance of Muslims, shot him dead. Gandhi was 78. His example inspired Martin Luther King Jr. to lead a nonviolent struggle for civil rights in the United States in the 1950s and 1960s. But many believe Gandhi would not be pleased with today's warlike India, still beset with religious hatred. Says Gandhi's great-grandson Tushar: "He would be a very disappointed man."

With reporting by BARRY BEARAK, co-chief of The New York Times's New Delhi bureau, in Kashmir.