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New Delhi:
India Monday protested to the US after the State Department
website depicted parts of Jammu and Kashmir as Pakistani territory
and strongly reaffirmed that the entire border state is an
integral part of India.
Rejecting the "incorrect" depiction of India's borders, New Delhi
also asked the US deputy chief of mission here to get the map
corrected.
Earlier in the day, Foreign Secretary Ranjan Mathai said at the
Fourth MEA-IISS-IDSA Foreign Policy Dialogue on the theme "Towards
Stability in Asia" that the map should be corrected and the issue
needed greater attention.
"Yes, maps should be corrected...This is an issue we have to
continue to give important attention to," Mathai said at the
event.
Later, asked by reporters about the State Department's website
showing parts of Jammu and Kashmir, which India says has been
forcibly occupied since 1947, as Pakistani territory, Mathai said
the matter was now being discussed in the external affairs
ministry.
External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Vishnu Prakash, meanwhile,
said the government was aware of "the gross inaccuracies" in the
map of India on the State Department website and that the Indian
position was reiterated by a senior ministry official to the US
deputy chief of mission, who assured India that its concerns would
be conveyed to the State Department.
"The government has consistently rejected the incorrect depiction
of India's borders on maps used by the US government. It has used
every opportunity to convey to the US side its concern in this
regard, and has asked that these maps be corrected," Prakash said.
India also took the opportunity to "reaffirm that the entire state
of Jammu and Kashmir is an integral part of India" and that it has
consistently conveyed to the international community that maps of
India should correctly depict the country's boundaries.
Mathai also said the ministry was "increasingly issuing demarches
to most of the world" for getting India's map wrong.
"I have been in this business and I have done this a couple of
hundred times over the last 35 years. Cartography is not an exact
science, particularly when viewed with a political outlook by
various countries," he added.
The State Department website (www.state.gov) carries profiles and
maps of all countries with which the US has diplomatic relations
bit in India's case, the map differs from the official Indian map,
completely ignoring New Delhi's claims over the Pakistani-occupied
part of Jammu and Kashmir.
Interestingly, the same website carries a pointer to the Indian
claim over that portion of Aksai Chin in the Ladakh region of
Jammu and Kashmir which is currently occupied by China.
Recently, a Chinese private company distributed a brochure to
Indian journalists with a Indian map showing Arunachal Pradesh as
part of China, resulting in a spat between Chinese ambassador to
India Zhang Yan and an Indian journalist, who objected to it.
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