UPSC aspirants taking History as optional subject, don’t have to look elsewhere. The 2016-batch IAS officer of Gujarat cadre Mr Nitin Sangwan has written a tome on the subject – Essentials History of Modern India , which makes the subject not only interesting but also scoring one.
Mr Sangwan’s earlier book Essential Sociology was a hit among the UPSC aspirants. The book got rave reviews and was among the most recommended books for Sociology, so much so, that the officer came up with a second edition last year. However, for the past five years, Mr. Sangwan had also been writing History of Modern India.
The Gujarat Governor, Acharya Devrat launched Mr Sangwan’s book titled ‘Essentials History of Modern India’ recently. “The book is the result of researching more than 100 existing books,” Mr. Sangwan said while speaking to Indian Masterminds.
Being a civil servant, Nitin believes in delivering the message or context in the simplest way possible and is hence famous among the aspirants. So, what’s really unique in this book which readers don’t usually get in books of other great authors like Ramachandra Guha and Romila Thapar?
THE MAKING
Mr. Sangwan said, “When we studied history it used to get boring and dry as it gets difficult to visualize it in an abstract form for anyone who has never seen or experienced those things. For example, if the Government of India Act 1919 is just written as it is in the books, it gets difficult for the readers to understand as some of the things are not even in practice in the current time.”
Hence, the officer tried to simplify History as a subject and brought it out in front of all types of people. However, this was not a short process as the crosschecking and research work took around five years till, he came out with the final product. He said, “Apart from the great History authors in our country like Romila Thapar, there are various errors in mainstream books which took most of the time for us to correct and cross verify.”
Giving an example for the same, he said that as India has seen a major tribal uprising, different mainstream books have different information about the tribes and it gets very difficult to figure out the right information. Hence, with a fresh new perspective, Mr. Sangwan patiently worked on writing this book.
KEY FEATURES
The book which has been launched online on Amazon and other e-commerce platforms, highlights more than 130 illustrations, maps and diagrams specially designed for aspirants and students to make history interesting. The book also includes, more than 1000 objective questions along with answers, model solved descriptive questions by CSE toppers, solved UPSC and State PCS previous years’ Mains questions, and 500 plus modern history specific definitions for clear understanding of topics.
More than that the book covers traditionally neglected topics in simple language and have exciting trivia at the end of each chapter to make history exciting for the readers.
Mr. Sangwan said, “We have received a good response till now and will hope that the readers now enjoy reading and learning history.”
