New changes to disputed areas - Indian claims over Kashmir

Recently the OSM map was changed to reflect India’s claims to the disputed region of Kashmir. The map previously only showed a thick-line international border at the Line of Control - the line where Indian and Pakistani sovereignty end. The Pakistani and Indian portions of Kashmir under their control looked like just another province/state.

The map is now rendered so that the border between Pakistan-Administered Kashmir and Pakistan proper appear to be a thick-line that looks like an international border. However, the border between Indian-Administered Kashmir and India proper do not appear as an international border in the same way.

This gives the appearance that the dispute is Pakistan’s sovereignty over its part of Kashmir - it now appears that the areas under Indian control area not disputed areas at all, because the border between Indian-Administered Kashmir and neighboring regions in India appear like an ordinary border between various Indian states. This also happens to be the official Indian stance towards the dispute - that the entire state belongs to it.

This has the consequence of making it appear as though OSM advocates India’s claims to the disputed region.

  1. Is there any way to revert it back to how it previously was? So that the border between Pakistan-Administered Kashmir and Pakistan proper goes back to looking how it used to? That is, it should not appear as an international border, but instead how it previously did - as a thinner line.

  2. India has several disputed borders. If the boundaries of neighboring countries with overlapping claims to territory under Indian control were to also be assigned to level 2 (thick international border), then the map of the country would like like a mess with Nepalese claims and Chinese claims over Arunachal Pradesh.

The issue is that I don’t really know what was done to change the line. I think the admin level was changed? I tried changing them all back to level 4, but the changes arent rendering so I must be missing something.

It looks as if you have identified the changes made which caused this, but it looks to me as if you have made the disputed area boundary a regular admin boundary which effectively duplicates that of “Azad Kashmir”. This is really quite involved & I’d really want someone like planemad or katpatuka to take a look at it.

In cases where you identify that someone has made a significant change to disputed areas, I think it is always wise to comment on the relevant changeset. This makes the change more visible to others who may be scanning for such things, and also makes escalation to the DWG easier.