I was unaware of Bharat Mata Mandir temple’s map of an undivided India until Mappery pointed to it. It’s another one of those giant relief map installations, only this one is made of marble; it sits in the temple in lieu of an idol. India is shown undivided—i.e., it doesn’t show the post-partition boundaries—because the temple was built in 1936.

A new online exhibition at Stanford Libraries’ Rumsey Map Center: Mapping the Islamic World: The Ottoman, Safavid and Mughal Empires. Curated by guest curator Alexandria Brown-Hejazi, the exhibition, which opened last week, “explores maps of the Islamic World, focusing on the ‘Gunpowder Empires’ of Ottoman Turkey, Safavid Persia, and Mughal India. […] A rich cartographic exchange took place between these three empires and European powers, as maps were used to chart their expansive territories, military campaigns, and trade routes.”

nepal-sikkim in 1975 by glaciers on Sketchfab

Satellite imagery only goes back so far. To measure the rate of ice loss across the Himalayan glaciers, researchers turned to recently declassified spy satellite photos from 1975. The photos were used to create a digital elevation model (above) which was compared with more recent data. They concluded that the rate of ice loss was accelerating: it was twice as much from 2000 to 2016 than it was from 1975 to 2000. Columbia University, Science News. [Geography Realm]

Pakistani clothing company Generation has put out a textile map of Pakistan showing the embroidery techniques of each region. Earlier this year, Craftsvilla did something similar with its fabric tour of India. [My Modern Met]

“While I was searching specifically for the pre and post independence maps in several Indian archives and institutions, I slowly found and collected all the other documents. At the end of my PhD I realised that if I had the complete collection of maps at the beginning of my studies, my research would have been much more easier and smoother. I decided to publish the whole collection with the aim that it will turn to be useful for scholars interested in understanding the capital of India,” Guerrieri told IANS in an interview.

[Tony Campbell/WMS]

An exhibition of map-related art is taking place at the Sakshi Gallery in Mumbai, India. Curated by Meera Menezes, Here Be Dragons and Other Coded Landscapes features works by 11 artists; it runs until 31 May. More from the Hindustan Times. [Caitlin Dempsey]

Sajjad Anwar and Sanjay Bhangar have been playing with train, station and schedule data from Indian Railways, one result of which (so far) is this reachability map—all the destinations reachable by a single train (i.e., without a transfer) from a given station. [Sajjad Anwar]

Previously: A Map of India’s Railway Network.

A schematic map of the Indian Railways network, produced by Arun Ganesh for the Indian Railways Fan Club. The Club has other maps as well. [Maps on the Web]

The regulatory measures proposed by the bill do not only cause worry but also bewilderment. Take for example Section 3 that states that ‘no person shall acquire geospatial imagery or data including value addition of any part of India’ without being expressly given permission for the same or being vetted by the nodal agency set up by the Bill. If implemented strictly, this may mean that you will have to ask for permission and/or security vetting before dropping a pin on the map and sharing your coordinates with your friend or a taxi service. Both involve creating/acquiring geospatial information, and potentially adding value to the map/taxi service as well.

Let’s take an even more bizarre hypothetical situation—the Security Vetting Agency being asked to go through the entire geospatial data chest of Google everyday (or as soon as it is updated) and it taking up to ‘ three months from the date of receipt’ of the data to complete this checking so that Google Maps can tell you how crowded a particular street was three months ago.

[WMS]

Previously: India Proposes Fines, Jail Terms for ‘Incorrect’ Maps.

Previously: India Censors The Economist’s Kashmir Map; India’s Mapping Panic Continues; The Survey of India Isn’t Helping; India Stamps Publications’ “Incorrect” Maps at the Border; Maps Must Be Cleared by the Survey of India; Google Earth, India and Security—Again; Google Earth: Indian Reactions.