Indian Heritage, Art and Culture (For Civil Services Preliminary and Main Examinations

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The term 'Culture' is usually understood to be the collective values of the society manifested through its numerous institutions as well as in the dispositions, attitudes and manners of its individual members. These in turn find expression in the various art forms-tangible and intangible, abstract ideas, beliefs and even in the material objects.

The Indian social landscape with its continuous and unbroken evolution of at least 5000 years has offered sufficient space for Indian culture to evolve into enchanting diverse forms. One cannot help but marvel at the distinct cultural waves which have swept our country through the ages and their confluences which have bloomed into new forms of culture. Truly, it has been the strength of Indian culture to assimilate the influences rather than to annihilate it.

Thus, our culture and art forms as we see them today, are a heritage of centuries of cultural tradition and evolution. Even to capture a glimpse of it is a colossal task, albeit a satisfying one. This is what this book has endeavoured to do.

The various aspects of Indian culture, right from the Indus Valley and the Vedic culture to the post-independence and modern culture, have been captured in this book. Although the subject of culture is wide, encompassing its numerous manifestations, the focus here has been on the need of the aspirant from the perspective of the civil-services examination. Considering that the scope of study of Indian culture is extremely diverse and a vast one, while the time of an average aspirant is limited, every effort has been made to capture the essence of all topics relevant. Thus, conciseness and preciseness are the twin hallmarks of this book.

The book begins with a detailed analysis of the topics and their relevance from the perspective of the civil-services examination. It also brings out the relative importance of the topic of 'Culture' in the scheme of the Preliminary and the Main examination as well the significance of the various sub-topics. Understandably, all the topics/subtopics are not equally important (from the examination perspective) and the book therefore helps the aspirants to prioritise.

Another unique aspect of the book is that it incorporates sufficient number of model questions for the Preliminary and the Main examination. These are analogous to what one may expect in the examination itself. The Preliminary questions section (Appendix-1) contains 100 model objective type multiple choice questions while the section on questions for the Main Examination (in Appendix 3) contains 20-20 questions each, which are fully solved or contain/indicate the important points to be covered. Relevant illustrations and photographs have also been provided at appropriate places to help the reader to grasp the nuances of the subject better.

Writing the book has been a long, enriching and satisfying journey for me and I thank the publishers for trusting me with this project and themselves putting in a lot of hard work.

I sincerely hope the book will kindle an avid interest in topic of Indian culture and also help the aspirants of civil-services in grasping the nuances of this topic and emerging with flying colours.

**Contents and Sample Pages**