Why is India's map drawn this way?

Modified on Sat, 8 Oct, 2022 at 10:01 AM

Maps are tricky, mostly because often times, borders are disputed by different parties, and each side want to see the map the way they want to see it. And honestly, we don't envy people in the map making businesses, because they can't please everyone.

Having said that, we are not in that business, we don't make maps nor draw borders. We use common web tools to generate our maps, including Google Maps. And maps usually serve you a dynamic version based on where you are located.

And in some cases, more than 2 versions are served (one for when you are inside each country and a third for international users).

Don't believe us? Go to Google Maps and type India, you will see them display India's map differently

For example, if you view Google Maps from India, you will see this map:

But if you visit Google Maps from outside of India, you would see this map:

As you can see, the borders change from solid to dashed (indicating disputed borders according to mapping conventions), and it will display LOC as the border between the two countries.

The same would happen if you login to your Tweepsmap account, you will see us using Google Maps (source is at the bottom of the map), and it renders using the same behaviour:

Tweepsmap for people using the service from within India:

Tweepsmap for people using the service outside of India:

Notice how our maps follow the same conventions, and also notice the source of our maps at the bottom.

So as you can see, our maps follow the same conventions. It's worth nothing that it's a common convention in the mapping world to display de-facto borders.

So in short, we serve India's map based on the geolocation of the user, and if you are unhappy with how public domains maps look like, feel free to change them!! They are public domain after all, put the effort to create public domain maps, not only you would impact us, but you will impact all online services that display public domain maps!