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- tools. So differently there,” 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

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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 century 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-

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“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. Most subsequent maps first triangulated surveys of flated and/or fictional kingdoms (until the present day) have been south India into one publica- were gone. Arrowsmith took a based on scientific measurements. tion. Figure 1. All previous calculated risk. EIC bureaucrats In a very real sense, the modern maps of India had been based on inaccurate route surveys – perhaps the best-known example being James Rennell’s 1789 Map of Hindostan. Figure 2. Arrowsmith’s maps were a great im- provement. Based on field surveys made between 1795 and 1810, his 16-page atlas showed the territory gained recently by the East India Company (EIC). The atlas provided the EIC’s Court of Directors their first coherent, reasona- bly reliable spatial visu- alization of south India. These maps minimized

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in this way. The first champion of these surveys was Governor- General Cornwallis – the same man who surrendered to George Washington at York- town, and who was Master of Ordnance in Britain when the Ordnance Survey’s new maps were being drafted. Figure 6. Governor-General Cornwallis led the Third British Mysore War. Since Haidar Ali ceded territory at the war’s end, the British wanted to map the lands Haidar Ali retained and also those they had gained. The man to do this was Col. Colin Mackenzie, who possessed a passion for documenting India’s antiquities and for mapping as a science. [11] Figure 7. The second champion of these surveys was Arthur Wellesley (later Duke of Wellington), whose brother Richard was Governor-General of India during the Fourth British Mysore War (1799). Figure 8. Arthur

mapping of India begins with Arrow- smith’s atlas. How Did This Cartographic Trans- formation occur? Triangulated surveys were expensive. Influential people had to be sufficiently convinced the benefits out- weighed the costs so they would be willing to champion the new surveys. The tem- plates for mapping India were Cassini’s 18th century Carte de France and the British Ordnance Survey maps of Eng- land (Figures 4 and 5). India was the first non-European world region to be mapped

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commanded an elite regiment in this war, went on to win the Battle of Waterloo against Napoleon, and became the most powerful man in the British Empire. Arthur’s protege was Lt. Wm. Lambton – passionate about measuring the earth. Figure 9. Lambton began the Great Trigono- metric Survey – completed after his death by Col. George Everest. Cornwallis and Wellesley became mapping champions because the British Crown had created the office of the Governor General of India (GGI). The GGI’s charge was to re- gain control over the EIC after the horrible post-1757 excesses. Accu- rate maps of India were one means of gaining control. No longer would EIC officials in India be able to de- ceive their superiors in England so readily, or so easily enrich them- selves at the expense of the Com- pany and the people of India. So maps were a means of dominating India, but they were also a means of controlling an EIC that had grown beyond the law. The surveys of Mackenzie and his trainees and the triangulations of Lambton’s men formed the inputs to Arrow-smith’s atlas. Figures 10, 11, and 12. They generated truly “hybrid colonial knowledge.” The surveys were carried out as a joint enterprise with the support and di- plomacy of Indians – right down to negotiating a hoisting of a theodolite to the top of the Brahadiswara Tem- ple gopuram in Thanjavur. Many surveyors were Eurasians. Mackenzie’s team of pandits was en- thusiastic in helping him explore, document and map south India. The Atlas. Arrowsmith’s atlas dis- plays most of Dravidian India from

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highway network. broadly similar to those of the Figure 15. Clearly present. This does not imply a the British Raj rein- static system, for each genera- forced the structure tion reworks entirely the land- and spatial relations scape it occupies according to of pre-existing settle- the contexts, standards, and ments. Thus, south opportunities of its day. India’s cultures, in- The maps show a somewhat stitutions, leaders, irregular 5-fold settlement hi- and villagers had erarchy (by typography and already sculpted the symbolization). [13] Figure 16. landscapes of the The extent to which Brahmin south into patterns informant/translators con-

Kanyakumari to the Krishna River. Figure 13. On the west, it included Por- tuguese Goa. On the east it included Pondichery and Tranquebar. It excluded today’s Kerala, Tamilnadu’s Dindigul District, Sri Lanka and also much of Hyderabad state. Arrowsmith created his own projection for the atlas. The large sheets form tiles that display south In- dia seamlessly when placed side by side. [12] We are only now inter- preting these maps. Al- 12 Arrowsmith also made the last route survey map of India in 9 sheets (1816, revised in 1820), scale 16 miles to the ready certain things are inch. A map at 4 miles to the inch seemed perhaps a sufficiently detailed scale, and simplified his computations too. clear. First, the atlas fo- 13 Urban historians have done exciting work on individual cities and the structure of Indian urbanization in earlier times, although they seem not to have investigated the spatial relations of cities. See J. Heitzman (2001). cuses only on the land “Urbanization in Southern India, 900-1900.” In S. Rajagopal (ed.). Kaveri: Studies in Epigraphy, Archeology, and His- area of peninsular India, tory. Chennai: Panpattu Veliyiittakam. p. 299-330. although more trade 14 R. Thakur (1994). “Urban hierarchies, typologies and classification in early medieval India: c. 750-1200”. Urban His- tory. Vol. 21, Pt. 1. p. 61-76 moved over coastal wa- 15 J. DeLoches (1993). Transport and Communications in India Prior to Steam Locomotion. Delhi: Oxford University ters than overland. Thus, Press. Vol. 1: Land Transport. 16 Spatial analysis of the transport network is planned. See R. Abler, J. Adams, and P. Gould (1970). Spatial Organiza- the maps were of mili- tion: The Geographer’s View of the World. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. tary-strategic signifi- 17 D. Ludden (2002). “Spectres of Agrarian Territory in Southern India.” Indian Economic and Social History Review. cance to the EIC. Figure Vol. 39. p. 233-257. See also D. Ludden (2003). “Maps in the Mind and the Mobility of Asia.” Journal of Asian Studies. Vol. 62. p. 1057-1078. 14. Second, the maps 18 C.R. Markham (1878). A Memoir on The Indian Surveys. 2nd ed. London: W.H. Allan & Co. display a fully articu- 19 There are smaller problems too. Walker, who took over after Arrowsmith died, mistakenly created the Indian Atlas lated urban system and sheets at a somewhat smaller scale than 1:253,440. He also changed the map projection so that sheets no longer tiled together. See Markham. 20 S.G. Burrard (1903). “On the Values of Longitude Employed in Maps of the Survey of India.” Professional Papers. Series 7. Calcutta: Survey of India. P. 6. Page 8 Lectures in Geographic Change

nent were major temple towns – such as Tirupati, Kanchipuram, Tiruvan- amallai, Madurai, Ti- ruchendur, Rameswaram and others. Figure 19a-d. That there was a “central place”-like pattern based on religious importance, or sanctity, is quite possi- ble. To religious centers came many pilgrims, who in turn brought their temple donations and their spending money. Pilgrimage was a religious and a recreational activity – so commerce and manufacture also found a niche in these towns. Places such as Kanchipuram became major manufacturing centers (for silk). Figure 20. structed this hierarchy wet-rice irri- we do not know – but gated, there are many agra- lands). Fig- harams, Brahma- ure 17. desams, choultries and Other lands chattrams indicating must have Brahmin-related settle- been under ments and pilgrim rest wet-rice cul- houses (aside from ma- tivation also. jor towns with famous Figure 18. temples and their asso- But perhaps ciated Brahmin domi- they were nated zones). [13] Rural not regularly settlements are indi- irrigated, or cated through four land Arrowsmith cover types – two of for- omitted est cover (palms and them be- “other”) and two related cause they to agriculture (showing crowded the seasonal reservoirs, printed “tanks”, and ayakut, page. Promi- The W.E. Upjohn Center for the Study of Geographical Change Presents...

There were other temple towns without secular twins – for in- stance, Madurai and Kumbako- nam. Each had different origins. [14] And Tirunelveli- Palayamkottai had a third pole, Melpalayam – where Arab Mus- lim traders engaged in interna- tional trade. The atlas shows a fully articu- lated road network, with a three -fold hierarchy. Figure 21. The main highways were shaded by trees, providing natural air-con- ditioning to travelers. Tree- lined roads were rare in north India at this time. We are told that the precedent for tree-lined roads was established by the 17th century Nayak queen of Madurai, Mangammal. [15] There appear to be thousands of kilometers of tree-shaded roads at this time in south India. Sec- ond tier roads were indicated by parallel lines, and third tier Presumably, the de- Palayamkottai, Rameswaram- (local roads) by a single line. mand for luxury tex- Ramanatha-puram, Shri-rangam- Importance and centrality of a tiles was great there, Tiruchira- and the “market” came palli, Kan- to the merchants in chipuram- this age of high freight Arcot, and trans-port costs. This is Tirupati- analogous to pilgrim- Chandragiri, age to cathedral towns among oth- in pre-industrial ers. In the Europe. As temples cases of Tiru- towns grew important pati and and needed secular au- Kanchipram, thorities to assure the Madras/ safety of their donated Chennai dis- assets, there seems to placed their have arisen in post- secular twins medieval times a “twin after they -city” effect – for in- came under stance, Tirunelveli- English in- fluence.

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place is denoted by the number and importance of roads inter- secting it. Finally, rivers and terrain show clearly on these maps. [16] The EIC never intended to create a benchmark to show what south India looked like before the modern age. But to us moderns that is exactly what it did. These maps give us visual spatial expression of south India before the age of telegraph and railway, before modern comercialization and industrialization. They provide evidence that south India was fully constructed before ever John Company or the British Raj appeared. Because the pace of change in those times was slow, the structure and spatial relations of south India as shown in these maps may also reflect broadly south India as it existed at the end of the medieval era. Ludden refers to this as the revelation of “spectral geographies”, when current conditions provide clues to geographical conditions of earlier times. [17] Figure 22a-c. This atlas is, therefore, useful in comparing south India

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south India ought to be geo- referencible and made comparable to later maps. There is one major problem. These maps were made in an age when it was still difficult to calcu- late longitude accurately. The Madras observatory was estab- of two centuries ago with south In- then can maps of different scales and lished in 1794. Its dia now, and also perhaps with the projections can be compared reliably. longitude was recom- south India of four centuries ago. This is easy to say, but more difficult to puted 14 times by Much more work is required to vali- do. Arrow-smith’s first “modern” maps of 1905, because calcu- date this hunch.

Geospatially Re-Discover- 21 I.N. Gregory and P.S. Ell (2007). Historical GIS: Technologies, Methodologies and Scholarship. London: ing India. Individual maps Cambridge University Press. and atlases are one thing. How 22 A prototype for an Historical Atlas of South India (covering the state of Puddukottai only) has been created recently, and extends from very early times up to ca. 1600. can we integrate them across 23 R.H. Phillimore (1950). Historical Records of the Survey of India. Dehra Dun: Survey of India. 4 vols. time and space? That is the 24 I do not propose for India anything I would not suggest for the United States. At The W.E. Upjohn Center challenge in rediscovering In- we are engaged in an “Authoritative U.S. Topographic Maps Initiative”. Not only are we digitizing and geo- referencing (with metadata) all topographic maps produced by all U.S. government agencies, we have just dia geospatially. Maps and completed the first 60,000 of these ultra-accurate digital maps for GIS use. other archival data sources are 25 W. Shakespeare (1611). The Tempest. 26 Professor Michael Bishop, personal communication. the pre-digital spatial data- 27 M. Monmonier (2008). Coast Lines: How Mapmakers Frame the World and Chart Environmental Change. bases of their time. By inte- Chicago: University of Chicago Press. grating diverse visual-spatial 28 A. Geddes (1960). “The Alluvial Morphology of the Indo-Gangetic Plain: Its Mapping and Geographical Significance”. Transactions and Papers (Institute of British Geographers). Vol. 28. p. 253-276. data and lexical-numerical 29 A. Geddes (1937). “The Population of Bengal, Its Distribution and Changes: A Contribution to Geographical data, we can use GIS systems Method.” The Geographical Journal. Vol. 39. p. 344-361. This work was followed by a more comprehensive to query, analyze, relate, and all- India review in A. Geddes (1942). “The Population of India: Variability of Change as a Regional Demo- graphic Index.” Geographical Review. Vol. 32. P. 562-573. integrate information that 30 R. Bryson and D.A. Baerreis (1967). “Possibilities of Major Climatic Modification and Their Implications: could never be used in this way Northwest India, A Case for Study.” Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society. Vol. 48. P. 136-142. previously – to learn new 31 O.H.K. Spate (1956). India and Pakistan: A General and Regional Geography. London: Methuen & Co.. 32 A. Geddes (1982). Man and Land in South Asia. New Delhi: Indian Council of Social Science Research. things, and to renew respect Published posthumously and edited by: A.T.A. Learmonth, A.M. Learmonth, C.D. Deshpande, and L.S. Bhat. for those who have preceded 33 P. Haggett (1996). “Geographical Futures: Some Personal Speculations.” In I. Douglas, R. Huggett, and M. us. For historic maps, the first Robinson, Companion Encyclopedia of Geography: The Environment and Humankind. London: Routledge. p. 965-973 challenge is coordinate control. 34 M. Monmonier (1985). Technological Trends in Cartography. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Each map must be geo- 35 J.B. Harley, quoted in J.W. Crampton (2010). Mapping: A Critical Introduction to Cartography and GIS. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons. referenced to standard, au- 36 T.S. Eliot (1942). Little Gidding. http://www.tristan.icom43.net/quartets/gidding.html thoritative coordinates. Only

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“rubber- sheeting”. In the process we have also rediscovered what the Sur- vey of India discovered more than a century ago – specifically that Col. George Ever- est’s computations contained an in- explicable error of about 7.14 seconds of longitude. [20] Figure 23. When cor- rected for this, there is excellent cor- lated values were always sus- john Center through a combina- respondence with Google Earth. pect. The values Lambton tion of geo-referencing and Correcting for longitudinal error is used were wrong. And Markham noted that if the longitudes of British maps of India in the 19th century were wrong, the en- tire mapping effort would have been wasted. [18] This is likely the main reason these maps have been forgotten. [19] This is the GIS digital age, though. With patience these maps can be repurposed and combined analyti- cally with other information. This is exactly what we have done in The W.E. Up-

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India. The Survey is a most professional organi- zation and has been so for a long time. [23] The Survey of India’s are some of the most accurate, beautiful, and detailed maps ever made. They are a de- light to the eye. The Sur- vey’s maps, together with information from the pre- digital databases of the respective surveys of India (archeological, anthro- not easy, but other able resolution (that also ber of national histori- pological, geological, problems are actually affect focus and lighting). cal GIS projects botanical, and the cen- more difficult. Before geo-referencing, (NHGIS) in the U.S., sus of India) and with Libraries – reposito- each map must be re- Britain, China and the maps of the Na- ries of many historic projected onto a virtual elsewhere. [21] In each tional Atlas and The- maps – follow imaging flat page, and only then there is an increasing matic Mapping Organi- rules and protocols de- can the virtual page be as- capability to inventory, zation (NATMO), veloped for digitizing signed coordinates. This is track, and model should be digitally pre- books. When scanning, a time-consuming and ex- change across time and served for use in an they do not like to flat- pensive extra step. New space. If there is not an NHGIS of India. [24] ten book pages for fear standards for imaging NHGIS of India, geog- More than this, his- of crushing the spine of maps contained in bound raphers, historians and toric manuscript maps the book. For text im- volumes must be devel- others should band of India, from which aging this is no prob- oped in dialogue with our together to realistically the printed maps were lem. Maps, being vis- librarian colleagues. Oth- envision one. [22] Of created, should be digi- ual-spatial scientific erwise, integration of his- high priority is the tally preserved also. documents, are quite toric maps in GIS will oc- proper digitization and Markham tells us different, however. The cur much more slowly than geo-referen-cing of his- many manuscript problem is that each desired. toric maps. maps were destroyed scanned page now con- The great promise of geo- Essential to any ef- in the early 1870s be- tains new sources of spatially-based work is fort are the historic fore the Survey of In- error composed of vari- that there are now a num- maps of the Survey of dia was formally estab-

Page 14 Lectures in Geographic Change lished. But early manu- studies Himalayan glacia- He immediately expressed (future sea script maps are thought to tion, recently told me that how useful these maps level) coastlines. survive in the British Li- his climate change detec- could be in studies of [27] Sea level rise brary, the National Ar- tion analyses are limited global climate change. issues are impor- chives of India, the Tamil- because historic satellite These maps also show the tant to India’s nadu State Archives, and imagery provides a per- maximum altitude of tree coastal zones and in the Survey of India. spective of only a few dec- growth, another bio- the Ganga- Priceless and irreplace- ades. [26] He needs a geographic indicator of cli- Brahmaputra able, they are India’s cul- deeper time frame for his mate variation. delta. Historic tural patrimony from the studies. I showed him the Second, global rise in sea maps could assist British Raj. following maps: 1) an In- level is subject of great im- analysis greatly. As William Shakespeare dian Atlas sheet showing portance. The devastating Geddes’ careful said long ago, “What’s past glaciers in Kashmir as 2004 Asian tsunami is a work on Bengal’s is prologue.”[25] Not only mapped personally by clear indicator that tempo- population growth do we study the past to Godwin-Austen about rary surges in sea level, and change could understand it better, we 1860; and 2) selected Sur- though rare, require care- form an integral study the past to under- vey of India sheets show- ful emergency planning feature of studies stand the present and to ing the Haramukh Glacier using maps of the first in this genre. [28] project the future. Many in Kashmir created be- (normal high water), sec- Moreover, Geddes’ issues in our global future tween WWI and WWII. ond (low-tide water), third methods for spa- depend on data about and Figures 24, 25, 26, and 27. (storm surge) and fourth tially interpolating from India. In- tensely de- bated studies of global climate change, sea level rise, and human dimensions of global change lie before us. Indian data, based specifically on historic Survey of India maps, are essential to these efforts. Let me cite just a few ex- amples. Global climate change is now being studied by many. A leading climate- earth systems scientist, who

Page 15 population data relative to land use and land character should not be ignored. [29] Third, cultural desertification is a practical issue in In- dia. If Bryson’s analysis is still largely correct, the Thar De- sert has developed and ex- panded spatially because of human overuse of a short- grass steppe biome.[30] And his claim that desertification can be reversed (without need of cooperation by/with Pakistan) is also interesting. Historic maps of this region could provide useful benchmarks to track both the historic advance of the desert, and its retrogres- sion because of reclamation ef- “RAMS.” “Read only” maps because in doing this we will be forts. (ROMS) – i.e., pre-digital printed able to remember the past more Historic maps could give in- and manuscript maps – were/are clearly, study the present more sight on other topics such as progressively giving way to crisply, and imagine the future studies of the badlands of the “random access” maps (RAMS) – more effectively. [35] And we will Chambal-Yamuna rivers region. i.e., digital maps created from do it using our multiple intelli- [31] Figures 28 and 29. Geddes’ computerized GIS databases. [34] gences – visual-spatial, linguistic, outstanding work on the This trend has only accelerated logical-mathematical…. In this, Gangetic Plain fits here exactly. since Haggett’s article. Geospa- we may be able to say with the [32] His intimate knowledge and tial geography is becoming ever drawings, many of which were poet T.S. Eliot, more vital and central among the “We shall not cease from exploration never published because they academic disciplines. And the end of all our exploring were oversized and in color, By converting historic maps of Will be to arrive where we started could be integrated into future India, such as Arrowsmith’s (and And know the place for the first studies. the Indian Atlas and Survey of time.” [36] Conclusion. Peter Haggett has India maps that followed) into We are in process of re-discover- noted presciently that, besides RAMS, we are actually en route to ing India in this generation in change occurring in the world understanding India anew new and interesting ways. It is around us, there have been ma- through studies that integrate an exciting time to be a geogra- jor changes occurring within the time with space. This is impor- pher in this great nation of India! discipline of geography. [33] The tant not only because J.B. Harley Thank you for your kind atten- first of the disciplinary changes has said quite simply and insight- tion. Namaskaar! he noted was in mapping – with fully, “The [historic] map ... re- a switch from “ROMS” to stores time to memory,” but also

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