The Geospatial Re-Disovery of India

The W.E. Upjohn Center for the Study of Geographical Change Presents Lectures in Geographic Change Series Fall 2010 THE GEOSPATIAL RE-DISOVERY OF INDIA The Arthur Geddes Memorial Lecture National Association of the Geographers, India -- November 19, 2010 From the Mr. Chairman made In- wish to say desk of and NAGI Offi- dia a major that you as Director cers and Mem- focus of his NAGI geogra- David G. bers, Geogra- profes- phers are far Dickason pher Col- sional ca- more expert leagues, reer. Al- than I on standing of India based on Friends. It is a very great though matters per- recent research, in hopes honor and pleasure to be this is taining to In- that it may stimulate your with you today. India is a called the dia. What I own thinking. country I love, the coun- Arthur intend is to Introduction. We – all try in which I grew up, Geddes share with of us – inhabit a multi- and in which I have car- Memorial you some of dimensional world. The ried out research. It is al- Lecture, I my under- world to which I refer is not ways a great pleasure to that of Indic civilization nor return to Chandi- of the West (although garh and to share both are, in fact, good fellowship multidimensional). I with colleagues at am referring to the Panjab University. universal world of My presentation human cognition and today is in three experience. Howard parts. First, intro- Gardiner has shown ductory comments; that human beings second, focus on a across all cultures key historic map of possess multiple in- India; and third, telligences. [1] There the geospatial re- are seven of them: 1) discovery of India – linguistic-auditory; that is, how we 2) logical-mathema- may engage in In- tical; 3) visual- dia’s time-space spatial; 4) musical; 5) integration using bodily-kinesthetic; 6) geographic infor- interpersonal-social; mation systems and 7) intrapersonal- (GIS). This forms introspective/ something of an intuitional. These agenda for the fu- intelligences are, in ture. Yet it also fits effect, separate lan- with the academic guages we use and interests and orien- understand, but to tation of Professor varying degrees. Arthur Geddes, a They affect how we geographer who learn, what interests The W.E. Upjohn Center for the Study of Geographical Change Presents... dent that gional variety he ob- you know served. Nehru’s unified well -- a book mental map of India by that great gave major impetus to nationalist India’s Independence Jawaharlal movement. A coherent Nehru, enti- mental map of India is tled The Dis- likewise as important covery of In- today for each citizen dia. [2] as it was for Nehru in Nehru ex- his time. Every genera- plored India tion requires its own after return- common constructs to ing from the maintain national U.K., as did unity. How is this ac- Mahatma complished? In my Gandhi. view, Indian geography During his and Indian geogra- travels, phers contribute to na- Nehru con- tion-building in many structed his ways, but particularly mental map by helping students to of India. He came to un- develop their own co- derstand that there ex- herent mental maps of us, and how we func- with the territorial differ- isted basic cultural com- India. tion in the world. Al- entiation of the earth, the monalities throughout Specifically, mental though we employ the earth as the home of the India, while yet she maps of the nation seven intelli- human spe- showed regional diver- come from consulting gences daily, cies (as well sity in landscape, soci- historic maps that we geogra- as all other ety, and economy. Cul- show the continuity of phers proba- The oft-quoted animate and tural continuities from Indian society across bly are simi- phrase “the past is a inanimate the past, very much alive long history. By his- lar in having phenomena), in the present, took foreign country: toric maps, I do not re- well devel- and find precedence over the refer to maps we make to oped visual- they do things maps useful describe the India of spatial intel- differently there,” tools. So ligences. the blend 1 Howard Gardiner (1983). Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences. Many, if not reminds us historic of our in- New York: Basic Books. most of us, maps always need telligences 2 Jawaharlal K. Nehru (1956). The Discovery of India. New York: John Day Company. like maps and has influ- 3 E.g., J.E. Schwartzberg, (Ed.) (1978). A Historical Atlas of South Asia. Chicago: Uni- to be interpreted in versity of Chicago Press. graphics – enced our 4 S. Ramaswamy (2010). The Goddess and the Nation: Mapping Mother India. Dur- perhaps to light of their times. choice of ham: Duke University Press. 5 M. Monmonier (1996). How to Lie With Maps. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. the point of career, and 6 L.P. Hartley (1953). The Go-Between. London: Hamish Hamilton. being “mapa- choice of 7 Sir L. Namier, in J.P. Kenyon (1983). The History Men: The Historical Profession in holics” or “carto- specialty within geogra- England Since the Renaissance. London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson. 8 A. Arrowsmith (1822). Atlas of South India. Privately Printed. philiacs” (I am a map phy, and our preferred 9 Worldcat lists only six copies in libraries -- two in the U.S. and four in Europe. lover too). We geogra- tools for analysis. My 10 M.H. Edney (1991). “The Atlas of India 1823-1947: The Natural History of a Topog- phers are concerned talk today has a prece- raphic Map Series,” Cartographica Vol. 28. P. 59-91. 11 D.M. Peers (2005). “Colonial knowledge and the military in India, 1780-1860,” Jour- nal of Imperial and Commonwealth History. Vol. 33. P. 157-180. Page 2 Lectures on Geographic Change long ago. There are many good historical atlases; but I do not refer to them. [3] Nor do I refer to iconic map-like graphics that may have propa- ganda uses, or that play on the nostalgia of readers. [4] Nos- talgic cartogra- phers want us to yearn for an- cient Golden Ages that were perhaps consid- erably less “golden” than we moderns imagine. And Monmo- society in those times. The oft- times. [6] We should dis- nier has shown how easy it is to lie quoted phrase “the past is a cover why and how they with maps. [5] Instead, I suggest foreign country: they do things were created in order to un- we need to find maps created in differently there,” reminds us derstand what they repre- earlier times that give insight into, historic maps always need to sent. And we should recog- and inventory of, the spatial struc- be interpreted in light of their nize human beings do not ture and spatial relationships of distinguish the past from present and future times very reliably (regard-less whether time itself is cycli- cal or linear). As the histo- rian Sir Lewis Namier ob- served, “One would expect people to remember the past and to imagine the future. But in fact...they imagine... [the past] in terms of their own experience, and when trying to gauge the future they cite supposed ana- logues from the past: till by a double process of repeti- tion, they imagine the past and remember the future [italics mine]. [7] Because old historic maps are not of Page 3 The W.E. Upjohn Center for the Study of Geographical Change Presents... our making, they warrant careful study. They do not come from our imaginations, and precisely for that reason they can be convincing informa -tion sources. But we may have to work hard to tease out their insights. Old maps are in short supply, read. The second point, its corol- Historic Maps of India. are increasing in monetary lary, is this. Until one has seen a Three years ago I went to the value rapidly, and are inaccessi- proper digital map facsimile, one Library of Congress in Wash- ble to most people. So the first has not really seen the map at all. ington DC. It contains the point I wish to make is that we This I have only come to under- world’s largest map library need excellent digital facsimiles stand recently, and I hope this with more than 5 million flat (that is, exact copies) of historic point will be exemplified in to- maps and 80,000 atlases. maps so that all may access and day’s illustrations. When I asked for 19th cen- tury ¼-inch sheets of The Indian Atlas the librarian could only say they had some ¼-inch maps of India. She re- trieved a cart loaded with huge leather- bound volumes, each one full of maps of India at a scale of 4 miles to the inch. At the very bottom was Aaron Arrowsmith’s Atlas of South India. [8] Here was a very important document in South Asian and world cartography, discovered by fortu- nate coincidence. [9] Importance of Arrowsmith’s At- las. Arrowsmith, a leading cartogra- Page 4 Lectures in Geographic Change “loaned” him secret manuscript maps of south India so he could make his atlas. On see- ing it, the Directors commanded India be mapped according to Arrowsmith’s design. The first map in this series was published in 1827, the first of many sheets called The In- dian Atlas. [10] Figure 3. Plates were printed until 1906 when the Survey of India issued other, better map series. Arrowsmith’s atlas was important because it transformed British Indian cartography from an art to a pher of his time, conflated the cartographic misinformation: in- science.

Load more