Study Notes

Everything published under Study Notes on Anantam IAS, newest first.

3454 articles

A railway platform at dawn with a blank hand-painted signboard, bundles of coarse hand-spun cloth stacked on a trolley.

25 Jul 2026Indian Polity, PSIR Optional

Indian Nationalism: Strategies of the Freedom Struggle

The movement’s history is a history of methods. Each generation concluded that the previous method had reached its limit, and the sequence from petition…

A small-town meeting hall with rows of wooden benches, a single microphone on a cloth-covered table, and loose cyclostyled sheets scattered on the floor.

25 Jul 2026PSIR Optional

M. N. Roy, Lohia and Jayaprakash Narayan

Three men who began as Marxists and ended somewhere else. Each concluded that the party was the problem: Roy replaced it with organised democracy,…

A wooden charkha spinning wheel and a heavy bound law volume with a fountain pen resting on it, together on one plain shared table.

25 Jul 2026PSIR Optional

Gandhi and Ambedkar

They agree that untouchability is intolerable and disagree about everything that follows. The disagreement is not personal or tactical: it is about whether the…

A colonial-era college verandah with deep arched openings, a bare lectern, a brass oil lamp and a folded journal on a bench.

25 Jul 2026PSIR Optional

The Nineteenth-Century Response: Sir Syed Ahmed Khan and Sri Aurobindo

Both men are answering the same question, what a subject people should do about a civilisation that has overpowered it. Sir Syed answers by…

A stack of palm-leaf manuscripts bound with cord on a low wooden desk beside a brass stylus, lit through a carved stone lattice screen.

25 Jul 2026PSIR Optional

Classical Traditions: Dharmashastra, Arthashastra and Buddhist Thought

Three traditions, three answers to the same question about the source of political authority. Dharmashastra grounds it in cosmic duty, Arthashastra in the state’s…

An empty public square at dawn with one plain table and two chairs at its centre, long shadows across the paving.

25 Jul 2026PSIR Optional

Hannah Arendt

Arendt’s claim is that politics is not a means to anything. It is the activity in which people appear to one another as distinct…

A tall iron-mullioned factory window above an old printing press, coal dust hanging in the shaft of light.

25 Jul 2026PSIR Optional

Marx and Gramsci

Marx explained why the working class must revolt. Gramsci, writing in a fascist prison after it had not, explained why: because rule in a…

An English writing desk beneath a tall sash window with a quill, an inkwell, a folded pamphlet and a small brass key, morning light.

25 Jul 2026PSIR Optional

Locke and John Stuart Mill

Locke establishes that government is limited because it is held on trust. Mill, two centuries later, finds that the limit constrains only the state,…

A chessboard mid-game on a dark table beside a heavy plain iron helmet, lit by a single candle.

25 Jul 2026PSIR Optional

Machiavelli and Hobbes

Both break politics away from theology, and both are read as apologists for power. Both readings are wrong in the same way: each is…

A weathered Greek stone colonnade with two empty plinths side by side, an olive branch resting on the lower one.

25 Jul 2026PSIR Optional

Plato and Aristotle

Plato asks what the best state would be and derives it from a theory of knowledge. Aristotle asks what states are actually like and…

A workshop shelf holding three objects in a row under a single lamp: a hand-spun cotton thread spool, a tightly bound bundle of iron rods, and a small writing desk drawer standing open.

25 Jul 2026PSIR Optional

Political Ideologies II: Fascism, Gandhism, Feminism

These three share nothing except that each rejects the liberal settlement at its root. Fascism rejects reason, Gandhism rejects the modern state, and feminism…

An old letterpress type case on a workbench, three of its compartments holding three different raw materials: a spool of cotton thread, a handful of iron nails, and a glass ink bottle.

25 Jul 2026PSIR Optional

Political Ideologies I: Liberalism, Socialism, Marxism

An ideology is not a bad theory; it is a theory doing a different job. It connects a picture of human nature to a…