History and Art and Culture are considered important topics in the Civil Services Examination. To ensure that you are not pulled back, we have curated some useful tips shared by two IAS officers on Quora.

RA Israel Jebasingh, a 2004 batch IAS officer, says these subjects play a significant role in Prelims for securing a ticket to Mains.

“About 10 to 15 questions are asked from this area for Prelims every year. Hence, try to study accordingly. Both History and Art and Culture are rewarding areas that can play to your strengths if approached correctly,” he explains.

Jebasingh believes aspirants should focus on NCERT textbooks as their primary resource for both Modern India and Art and Culture, especially for commonly repeated topics.

For other topics in Modern India, aspirants can either look to NCERT or Bipin Chandra’s India’s Struggle for Independence. This can be supplemented with books like Spectrum for additional reading.

Instead of simply memorising information from books, Jebasingh stresses the importance of recognising the flow of the events and understanding the context of these happenings.

He advises students to refer to previous years' question papers to understand the repeated topics to make their preparation easier.

For Art and Culture, he says that it is better to start with NCERT and then move on to reference textbooks like Nitin Singhania’s Indian Art and Culture.

It is important to memorise necessary information related to various topics like art, architecture, cultural aspects, important personalities, etc.

Meanwhile, Bhavesh Mishra, a 2015 batch IAS officer, says the best way to study history is to follow a “time machine” approach.

“Imagine that you have a time machine and just use it to transport yourself in that period and ask yourself what you would have done if you were Ashoka, Akbar, Dalhousie or Gandhiji,” he says.

“Following this process, you will start loving history, and it would not just be about boring dates and names but rather like a fascinating movie,” he adds.