The perfect textbook

The tale is instructive because to practically all North Indians the people who live in the five states that comprise peninsular India - the South - are kalay Madrassi

Modern South India: A History from the 17th Century to Our Times

Rajmohan Gandhi

Aleph

Rs 800; Pages 508

There used to be a telling anecdote doing the rounds in the mid-1990s. A poorly educated but very populist chief minister of Uttar Pradesh asked the chief minister of Kerala to write to him in Hindi. The latter is believed to have replied: “Why don’t you first teach your people to read and write Hindi?” 
 

Kerala had just attained 100 per cent literacy. UP’s was at about half that. 
 

The tale is instructive because to practically all North Indians the people who