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When the Map Is the Nation: Cartographic Anxiety and the Territorial Politics of Postcolonial Asia
“The external boundaries of India as depicted are neither accurate nor authentic.” - These are the words that for decades Indian customs officials have stamped on every foreign atlas or map that has shown India’s borders differently from the official Indian claim. It is this set of words in a rubber stamp applied to thousands of books that becomes the perfect description of cartographic anxiety in action. Cartographic anxiety is a term attributed to a political scientist at the University of Hawaii, Sankar Krishna, who published a landmark paper titled Cartographic Anxiety: Mapping The Body Politic in India in 1994.
Illustration by The Geostrata
MAPPING NATIONAL IDENTITY
At its core, Sankar Krishna’s argument is that nations which emerged from colonial rule, that is, postcolonial states, tend to suffer from a deep and persistent anxiety about their territorial identity. Unlike older nation-states that were formed gradually over centuries, most post-colonial states were created suddenly, often through a combination of partition and violence, with borders drawn up by the colonial powers, and this left them in a state which Krishna calls being ‘suspended forever in the space between the former colony and the not yet nation’. And because these nations never fully developed and completed their borders in the historic sense, the map often becomes a substitute for that completion.
The black lines on a map become proof of their existence, and any challenge to those, whether in a foreign atlas depicting a different boundary or a territorial dispute with a neighbour or even just a film that depicts an inaccurate map, becomes an existential threat to the nation’s very identity instead of just a minor geographic disagreement. But why did only post-colonial states suffer from this? This was mainly attributed to the fact that the borders drawn by the colonial powers were mostly for administrative convenience and did not reflect the ethnic, linguistic, or cultural realities of the divided nations.
When they left, the newly independent nations inherited these very borders but lacked any deep historical ties with them.
These borders were not products of organic state-building but just mere lines on a map; this led to specific anxieties for these postcolonial nations. Is the border clearly defined and internationally recognised? Could the border possibly be changed by force, by legal challenge, or by diplomatic pressure? And does the ambiguity in the map undermine the completeness of the nation itself? The departure of the colonial powers left the newly postcolonial nations grappling with these questions, and this continues to shape global diplomacy to this day.
BORDERS AS SURVIVAL
The most vivid example of Krishna’s concept is in how China refers to the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh as “Zangnan” (South Tibet) in its official maps and has systematically renamed locations within it, with 27 locations being renamed in 2025, including locations in Assam. This dispute can be traced back to the McMahon Line proposed by the Foreign Secretary of British India, Sir Henry McMahon, during the 1914 Simla Convention, which now acts as the de facto border between India and China in the East, separating Arunachal Pradesh from Tibet, which China has refused to legitimately recognise as an official boundary and terms it as an illegal colonial imposition.
India’s response to this situation has been both institutional and constitutional, with the state of Arunachal Pradesh being described in Indian law as an ‘integral and inalienable part of India’. Similarly, Sir Creek, which is a 96-kilometre-long narrow marshy estuary on the Indian-Pakistan border in the Rann of Kutch, has been a matter of cartographic dispute since the 1960s because it hinges on which version of a 1914 map is authentic and whether that boundary runs through the middle of the creek or along its eastern bank. A dispute that has been ongoing for over sixty years because neither side is willing to accept a cartographic concession, resulting in a policy paralysis that prevents both nations from settling maritime boundaries, unlocking valuable offshore resources, and reaching functional trade or security agreements.
LINES OVER LAWS
One of the most dramatic examples of cartographic nationalism in the contemporary world is perhaps China’s Nine-Dash Line, a line which encompasses approximately 90% of the South China Sea. Appearing first in a Chinese map in 1947, this line overlaps with the exclusive economic zones of Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei and Indonesia. An international arbitral tribunal under UNCLOS in 2016 ruled that the Chinese claims had no legal basis under international law, yet China rejected these claims, and in 2023 it even expanded this, releasing an updated ‘ten-dash line’ map.
This is not just a mere strategic claim, it is China trying to assert a cartographic identity that precedes international law turning it into a security crisis.
Cartographic anxiety remains not only as ink on a map but can have actual lethal consequences for human life. The Preah Vihear Temple, which exists on a cliff on the border between Thailand and Cambodia, was ruled to belong to Cambodia in 1962 by the International Court of Justice on the basis of a French colonial-era map from 1907 but this judgment was never fully accepted by Thailand, which led to armed dispute in 2008-2011 resulting in at least 28 casualties a deadly pattern that repeated in late 2025, when renewed heavy fighting and airstrikes around the temple complex claimed over a hundred lives and displaced thousands.
ANXIETY INTO POLICY
These lines on a map also have strategic policy implications. When a boundary becomes tied to national existence rather than simple administrative management, military deployment along every inch of it becomes non-negotiable. This is vividly reflected in India’s extensive defense infrastructure along the unforgiving terrain of the Line of Actual Control (LAC), where hostile topography and sovereignty converge to make forward militarisation an indispensable strategic imperative.
Diplomatic concessions of territory become increasingly difficult for states experiencing cartographic anxiety, even if that compromise can be strategically beneficial because conceding any part of the map is seen as giving up a part of a nation’s identity.
These are not just irrational emotions but rather responses to a fear of losing one’s own identity and existence. Understanding these responses becomes critical for building a framework that can produce a more accurate and productive diplomatic route.
THE UNFINISHED MAP
In the contemporary world order with digital maps and satellite imagery, cartographic anxiety is not only diminishing but also intensifying. With every Google map label, every Netflix film, and every gaming app that depicts a disputed border differently, it has the potential to now trigger a diplomatic response. The black and white map is fast becoming one of the most contested zones of dispute and central to how postcolonial nations identify and understand themselves. A 1994 observation has truly aged like fine wine, becoming even more relevant for the coming generation of analysts to study in an attempt to understand modern statecraft.
BY ASMITA SAHA
TEAM GEOSTRATA
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