Manosi Lahiri's Mapping India will engage, inspire and enthrall an untapped reader base of wannabe cartographers and history buffs to the rare treasures that size up the contours and corners of subcontinental India, as Fiona Fernandez was to unearth


Duffing Section staff at work at the Survey of India, Calcutta,
1890s-1911

Mapping India appears ominous to the lay readeru00a0- tell us about the background research? What went through your mind as you began work?
Over the years, it has come to my notice that as a nation we are quite unaware of our cartographic history. I felt the remedy to the situation lay in encouraging people to read about how and why other nations made maps of this country. I began by reading books and visiting map repositories to see their collections. I planned to include many maps to illustrate the text. It was then that I realised the enormity of the task I had set myself. I hope other researchers will take on from where my book ends.

Untitled map to illustrate the travels of Dutch missionary and
traveller van Linscoten to Goa; published in 1596

What were the biggest challenges that cropped up, the unexpected ones in particular?
It was daunting to get permission from authorities in India to photograph the relevant maps. I sourced many manuscript maps from the National Archives of India. Often, the map sheets stored there were so large, brittle or faded, that it was a technical challenge to reproduce them in the book. But we finally got over these problems by selecting illustrative sections from the map sheets and involving expert photographers and technicians. These problems did not occur when sourcing from foreign libraries because they already hold much of their resources in digital form and are ready to give permission to publish them.