Picturing Place: Painted And Printed Maps At The Udaipur Court

I spent the morning browsing through a fabulous collection of maps belonging to the former royal Udaipur state (Oodeypore, for the British) that are part of the exhibition, Picturing Place: Painted And Printed Maps At The Udaipur Court, at Maharaja Fatehsinh Museum brought together by Getty Foundation and Maharana of Mewar Charitable Foundation (MMCF). 

The job of mapping of the state (like in many other places in the world) gradually shifted from the hands of court artists to British/Western surveyors over the centuries. You see the change in colours, from the vivid to the pastels, the fewer labels in the 'native' parts of the town. There's an illustrated map of the world in Urdu by a Muslim cartographer for students of the Punjab with an incorrect Gujarat coastline and has illustrations of snake and Taj Mahal on Hindustan. Another one about the German Empire during World War I fails to mention the Ottoman Empire in Turkey. There's a 1930s map that expands the reach of the British India until the Straits of Malacca including Burma on the east (correct) and Balochistan on the west (not quite correct). Much of the world was colonised by Britain because of these maps that distorted and misrepresented countries and their boundaries. Maps were used as propaganda and publicity for expeditions, explorations and war. Not much as changed over 700 years of history. The exhibition is on till August 31 and you are not allowed in with any devices with cameras. If you love history, geography and art, this one's worth it. 

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