THERE is no surer way for The Economist’s Asia section to cause offence than to publish a map. Almost any cartographic representation of the continent is bound to upset some individual reader or government. Alas, we use maps not to portray the world as it ought to be, or even as we would like it to be, but as it is.

Angered most often, to judge by its actions, is the government of India. Our maps that include the disputed territory of Kashmir (see image below) show it carved up into Indian, Pakistani and Chinese areas of control. Every time we print one, every single issue of the magazine distributed in India is defaced with an official stamp. The government thinks it important to inform readers that the external boundaries of India as depicted are “neither correct nor authentic”.

Some readers in India seem to suspect us of malice: perhaps we publish such maps purely to irk the authorities and add to the overtime earnings of the hard-pressed stampers. The truth is more benign: in using “the line of control” that divides Kashmir in the absence of an agreed international frontier we are merely noting the status quo, not endorsing it. In practical terms, too, India’s own maps, on which Kashmir is entirely Indian, are hardly helpful to the uninformed. Any foreign traveller seeking to make what looks like a short hop from Srinagar in Indian-administered Kashmir to Muzaffarabad in the Pakistani part would find himself having to make a very long detour. (source)