Since I started doing research in 2012, I have on multiple occasions come across academic works using maps of India that are not constitutionally validated. Dissertations, research papers, presentations, and course materials frequently include them, with the authors seemingly importing them from unchecked online sources. Departments, review committees, and publications often approve these maps even though they wrongly show India’s boundaries. Throughout my years of research, this has been a consistent problem, not an isolated incident. This is the unsettling reality lying at the core of India’s concerns with a map that portrays its territorial integrity.

The National Map Policy of 2005 has worked in that direction – for instance, the Open Series Maps developed by the Survey of India for civilian use have deliberately blurred out ‘vulnerable points’ and done away with the grid reference system, unlike the Defence Series Maps. That policy-level caution to restrict visibility of critical infrastructure is insufficient, as they are accurately identifiable through satellite images available on handheld devices. The same level of consciousness is invisible over the maps that are quietly made and circulated to challenge India’s territorial integrity.

The element that should worry every Indian reader is that shapefiles, the fundamental data structures needed to create maps in geographic information system........

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