Shadow lines

India,displaying no sense of irony,has censored an issue of The Economist with a cover story on The Worlds Most Dangerous Border. The magazine was forced to cover the Kashmir map with a blank white sticker in over 30,000 copies,because it was shown as divided between India,Pakistan and China. International news publications are often delayed because a special Customs cell has to stamp each such map with the disclaimer that these are neither accurate nor authentic. Though The Economist has explained that using the Line of Control in the absence of an agreed international frontier is merely to state the status quo,not endorse it,the government will have none of it.

Despite the fact that the technology has rendered such strictures irrelevant,the Indian state remains inordinately panicky about how its boundaries are represented. Publishing inaccurate external boundaries and coastlines is a cognisable offence,and amounts to questioning the territorial integrity of India. Anyone who wants to publish a map has to approach the famously tardy Survey of India for permission. We know that maps are not perfect,objective miniatures of a territory; they are authored documents,and instruments of control. The more insecure a region,the more it pores over maps and legends. Nazi Germany was obsessed with cartography. In the pre-glasnost era,the Soviet Union regularly falsified its maps,using cartography as a tool for propaganda and military needs. They were made to thwart and disinform military rivals for instance,the town of Logashkino was shown at six different spots near the East Siberian Sea. In eastern Europe,nationalism and ethnic assertiveness were played out in struggles over these representations.

But India is a world away from these situations,in psychological terms. We,the citizens,appreciate the distinctions between the border,the line of control,the line of actual control,etc,and to merely setting our eyes on a map that does not follow official lines will not vaporise the idea of India. Whats more,we need to square with reality talks on borders have figured in Indias engagement with Pakistan and China. Withholding the ground situation from the people is surely a doubtful way to go about that diplomatic challenge. After all,our self-image is large and robust enough not to be threatened by a few lines on a page when we can freely refute the depiction if they happen to be questionable.