PSIR Power 50 – Day 9 Capsule: Ideologies - Part 2/2+ Practice Qs |ForumIAS

Hello Aspirants

Today it’s about Ideologies again – Fascism, Gandhism, Feminism, Value pluralism, Multi-culturalism, Post-modernism, and End-of-Ideology.

Classification across all the ideologies is not neat due to overlaps with other topics but across these topics- Fascism, Feminism, Post-modernism, and End-of-Ideology, there are 5 ten-mark, 3 fifteen-mark, and 1 twenty-mark questions in last 12 years. PSIR Ideologies question paper

Fascism

1. Definition

Ultra-nationalist, authoritarian, corporatist rule first institutionalised by Benito Mussolini (Italy, 1922) and refined by Adolf Hitler (Germany). Fascism is often defined by what it rejects: anti-rational, anti-liberal, anti-socialist, anti-democratic, anti-Enlightenment.

2. Core Pillars

Pillar	Quick-take	Classic line
Nation-state absolutism	State is supreme – individuals are “cells.”	“Everything for the State, nothing outside the State, nothing above the State.” – Mussolini
Totalitarian control	Single-party, single-leader; politics, society, economy fused.
Corporatism	Syndicates of business & labour integrated under state arbitration; strikes banned.
Militarism & war cult	War = national rebirth; glorified as creative.	“War is to men what motherhood is to women.” – Mussolini
Irrationalism	Emotion, myth, instinct > reason; scorn for Enlightenment.
Elitism & leader-principle	Hierarchy natural; charismatic leader deemed infallible.
Racialism / imperial destiny	“Elite nations” must dominate; extreme form in Nazi anti-Semitism.

3. Historical Variants

Italian Fascism – fascio symbol; corporatist chamber; Lateran Pacts.
German Nazism – adds biological racism & Volksgemeinschaft; Holocaust.
Salazarism (Portugal), Peronism (Argentina) – authoritarian hybrids with fascist overtones.

4. Philosophical Roots (often selectively mis-used)

Source idea	Appropriated by fascists
Plato – philosopher-king	Justified rule of a wise elite.
Niccolò Machiavelli	Amoral power politics; raison d’état.
Thomas Hobbes	Absolutist sovereignty for order.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau	General will coerces dissenters to be “free.”
Johann Fichte / Herder	Cultural-linguistic nationalism.
Friedrich Nietzsche	Misread Übermensch as racial hierarchy.
Henri Bergson	Primacy of instinct and vital will.
Georges Sorel	Myth & violence as catalysts of mass action.
Charles Maurras	Integral nationalism, anti-parliamentarism.
Ernst Nolte	Fascism as reaction to Bolshevism & modernity.
Erich Fromm	Escape from Freedom explains attraction to authority.

5. Main Features

Irrationalism – reason scorned; truth lies in mythic destiny.
Totalitarianism – state permeates unions, media, art, family.
Elitism – minority of “born leaders” vs mass mediocrity.
Racial-imperial mission – hierarchy of nations; war as duty.
Corporatist economy – regulated syndicates; pursuit of autarky.
Anti-international law – bilateral domination preferred; League/UN despised.

6. Academic Readings & Critiques

Harold Laski: fascism = counter-revolution of late capitalism; destroys democracy to save oligarchy; state neutrality a myth.
Roger Griffin: palingenetic ultra-nationalism – core is myth of national rebirth.
Robert Paxton: judge fascism by practice, not texts – five stages from movement birth to entropy.
Traditional typology: “Totalitarianism of the Right” (fascism) vs “Totalitarianism of the Left” (communism).

7. Neo-Fascism (post-1945)

Ultra-nationalism + xenophobia, anti-liberal “system” rhetoric, charismatic leadership.
Participates in electoral democracy but weaponises digital propaganda.
Cases: French Front National, Greek Golden Dawn, varied right-wing populisms in US, Brazil, parts of Asia.

GANDHISM

Gandhism is not a single-issue creed but an integrated civilisational vision that braids ethics, economics, spirituality, ecology, technology and post-colonial nation-building into one programme of Sarvodaya—“the rise of all.”.

	Essence	Key Thinkers & Influences
1. Moral–Spiritual Core	Satya (truth), Ahimsa (active non-violence) and Dharma (duty) form the permanent yard-sticks of action. Ends are the fruit of the means; evil seeds breed evil trees.	Upanishads, Bhagavad Gītā (re-read by Gandhi contra B.G. Tilak), Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount (via Leo Tolstoy), Socrates & Plato’s Apology, Tulsidas on dayā. Modern expositors: Joan Bondurant (law-respecting satyagraha), Thomas Hill Green (moral self-realisation), R.N. Iyer (means–ends unity).
2. Ethical Economics	Replace “production for the masses” with “production by the masses.” Six keystones: Swadeshi, Bread-Labour (sharīrāśram), Aparigraha (non-possession), Trusteeship, Non-exploitation, Samabhāva (equality).	John Ruskin (Unto This Last → Gujarati Sarvodaya), Henry D. Thoreau (civil-disobedience), Charles Dickens (industrial squalor), Karl Marx & Fabian Socialists (benchmark critics of capitalism), rebutted by Gandhi’s non-violent, decentralised alternative. Elaborated by J.C. Kumarappa (Why the Village Movement, Capitalism, Socialism and Villagism). Gyan Chand codifies the human-centred economy.
3. Gram Swaraj & Villagism	Self-sufficient village republics—“oceanic circles” with concentric responsibilities from self to globe. Cities must serve, not exploit, the countryside.	Early rural critique by Rabindranath Tagore (Swadeshi Samaj). Comparative Italian warning via Mazzini, Cavour, Garibaldi, Victor Emmanuel II. Tagore later fears “medievalism” in Gandhi’s model; Gandhi replies with porous openness to world cultures.
4. Constructive Programme	11-point nation-building program: communal harmony, abolition of untouchability, Khadi & cottage industries, Nai Talim basic education, liquor prohibition, women’s emancipation, Hindustani language, sanitation, adult education, health, village uplift.	Practised in Sabarmati & Sevagram Ashrams. Women activists (encouraged by Gandhi & Kasturba): spinning, Salt March, humanitarian relief. Dalit dignity raised by renaming “untouchables” as Harijans.
5 • Comparative Ideological Stance	• Socialism/Communism: applauds egalitarian aim but rejects materialism, violent overthrow and “dictatorship of the proletariat” (Marx, Engels, Lenin, Trotsky). Substitutes trusteeship and voluntary redistribution. • Liberalism: accepts individual worth (Rawls, Dworkin) yet weds rights to duties; freedom is moral self-rule, not license. • Realpolitik critics (Machiavelli, Kautilya) & radical tacticians (Saul Alinsky) answered by universal, context-flexible ahimsa.	Dialogue with John Locke, Thomas Jefferson (right of resistance); engagement with Rawls’ idea of civil disobedience; Elements of Communitarianism in Alasdair MacIntyre & Michael Walzer.
6 • Sarvodaya as Socio-Political Order	Politico-moral architecture: • Swaraj-Democracy—bottom-up, participatory; • Rāma-rājya—justice, prompt and humane; • Sarvodaya Samāj—classless, non-violent, sustainable.	Extended in the Post-Gandhian phase: • Vinoba Bhave’s Bhoodan & Gramdan (4 million acres gifted) • Jayaprakash Narayan’s Sampoorna Kranti (Total Revolution). Thomas Vettickal frames it as “realistic utopia.”
7 • Ecological & Technological Ethic	“There can be no industrialisation without predation” (Kumarappa). Machinery welcome only if it serves all and keeps man central. Early advocate of appropriate technology & sustainability.	Contrast with Jawaharlal Nehru’s temple-of-modern-India industrialism. Influenced present eco-justice networks (global Sarvodaya groups, Bangalore HQ).
8 • World-Citizenship & Legacy	From Advaita’s unity of life to Nehru’s Non-Alignment; inspirer of Martin Luther King Jr., Bertrand Russell, Václav Havel, Corazon Aquino, Petra Kelly. Envisions humanity as one family beyond race, empire or extreme nationalism.	Contemporary scholars: Joan Bondurant, Dennis Dalton, Richard Sklar (over-developed state critique), Harold Laski (fascism vs. capitalist crisis), Thomas B. Macaulay (education debate), Lord Ampthill (correspondence).

One-Line Crystallisation

Gandhism = Sarvodaya in action—a non-violent, duty-anchored, village-centred, ecologically sane path that seeks bread, dignity and freedom for the very last, using only means that mirror that end.

Feminism

1. Why “feminisms”, not one feminism

Feminism resists essentialist definition; it is a family of theories and movements that continually contest each other’s premises. Any rigid meaning would imprison the very subject it tries to free.

2. Historical “waves” (a shorthand many feminists still dispute)

Wave	Dates & Drivers	Hallmark Goals	Foundational Thinkers
First Wave	mid-19th c – 1920s	Suffrage, property, education, marital & custody rights	Mary Astell – “If all men are born free… why not women?” · Mary Wollstonecraft A Vindication … (1792)
Second Wave	1960s-80s	Theory-building, autonomy over body, consciousness-raising; liberal / Marxist / socialist / radical streams	Simone de Beauvoir The Second Sex – “One is not born, but becomes, a woman.” · Betty Friedan The Feminine Mystique
Third Wave	1990s →	Post-modern, intersectional, global; critiques 2nd-wave whiteness	Naomi Wolf Fire with Fire – “power feminism” over “victim feminism”

3. Concept cornerstones

Key term	Insight & scholar
Sex / Gender split	Sex = biology; gender = social construct (Linda K. Olson, Linda Nicholson’s “biological foundationalism”).
Patriarchal dividend	Men’s collective benefit in patriarchy (R. W. Connell).
Reproductive technology & liberation	Shulamith Firestone called pregnancy “barbaric,” urged women’s control of IVF, abortion.
Intersectionality	Overlapping oppressions of race, class, gender (Kimberlé Crenshaw).

4. Strands of feminist theory

Strand	Core claims	Key works / thinkers
Liberal feminism	Reform existing liberal-democratic order; equality in public sphere; use the state	Wollstonecraft; Harriet Taylor; Lydia Becker; Betty Friedan; Janet Radcliffe Richards; Susan Moller Okin
Radical feminism	Patriarchy is root system; sexuality & reproduction central sites of control	Shulamith Firestone, Andrea Dworkin, Germaine Greer, Catharine MacKinnon
Socialist / Marxist feminism	Dual critique: capitalism + patriarchy; reproductive labour sustains capital	Marx & Engels Origin of the Family…; Clara Zetkin; Heidi Hartmann “Unhappy Marriage…”; Alison Jaggar
Post-modern feminism	Deconstruct binary identities; reject meta-narratives; identity is fluid	Judith Butler Gender Trouble; Luce Irigaray; Julia Kristeva
Black feminism	Race + gender oppression; centre Black women’s experience	bell hooks Ain’t I a Woman; Kimberlé Crenshaw (intersectionality)

5. Quick-reference quote bank

“He is the subject; she is the Other.” — Simone de Beauvoir
“Pregnancy is barbaric.” — Shulamith Firestone
“Power feminism urges women to seize the tools of power.” — Naomi Wolf

6. Cultural Feminism – “Re-value the feminine”

Focus	Essential Learnings
Core claim	Traits historically coded feminine—nurturing, empathy, relational ethics—should be prized as social goods.
Governance vision	If decision-making embodied these qualities, politics could be more cooperative and peaceful.
Key texts & voices	Carol Gilligan In a Different Voice (ethic of care) · Adrienne Rich Of Woman Born (motherhood re-read) · Mary Daly Gyn/Ecology (patriarchal religion dissected).
Critique	Risk of sliding into essentialism by treating such traits as biologically fixed and universal.

7. Eco-Feminism – Nature, women & the same oppressor

Element	Content
Roots	1970s convergence of environmentalism & women’s movement; term coined by Françoise d’Eaubonne.
Thesis	Patriarchal, industrial logic that exploits women also degrades ecosystems.
Key works	Carolyn Merchant Death of Nature (science & domination) • Vandana Shiva Staying Alive (Third-World women as ecological stewards).
Hallmarks	• Earth-centred spirituality • Women’s “closer” tie to nature used as political leverage.
Critiques	“Innate closeness” = essentialist; can romanticise non-Western societies.

8. Mapping Feminism (Iris Marion Young)

Point	Explanation / Why it matters
Insight – “Don’t build walls, draw maps.”	Iris Marion Young warns that slotting feminism into fixed boxes (liberal, radical, Marxist …) freezes inquiry. Treat the field as a map of overlapping terrains so new questions keep surfacing.
Outcome	A mapping approach encourages dialogue among strands, welcomes hybrid theories, and resists the essentialism that feminism itself critiques.

9. Feminist Critique of “Rationality”

Conventional binary	Feminist response
Reason = male, Emotion = female	Susan Heckman: this hierarchy writes women out of knowledge. Luce Irigaray: male language creates the “Other”. Walter J. Ong tracks written culture’s gendered biases.
Result	Women excluded from public deliberation → reinforces public/private split.

10. Public–Private Dichotomy under fire

Argument	Scholars Voices
Liberal theory fenced “home” off from politics; oppression hides there.	Susan Okin, Carole Pateman: family is political. Nancy Fraser: public/private is itself a power construct.
Intersectional twist	bell hooks asks, “Equality with whom?”—race, class, sexuality and disability create multiple privates.
Current trend	Shift from “difference” to plural “differences” (Kate Nash).

11. “The Personal is Political”

Origin & inflence	Content
Coined by Carol Hanisch (1969); fore-shadowed by Virginia Woolf (Three Guineas) and Simone de Beauvoir.	Private experiences (domestic violence, housework, bodily autonomy) are systemic, hence political. Extends arena of struggle beyond the state to bedrooms, clinics, workplaces.

12. Judith Butler & Gender Performativity

Idea	Focused Analysis
Gender not a thing, but a doing.	Gender Trouble (1990): identities are produced through repetitive acts regulated by norms.
Performativity	Not conscious “acting” but citation of norms that creates the illusion of a stable identity.
Subversion	Parodic performances (drag, metro-masculinity) expose the script → norms can be re-written.
Critiques	• If “women” dissolves, how mobilise for rights? • Dense post-structural jargon limits reach.

Value Pluralism

1. Why value pluralism matters

Liberalism tries to judge everything by one “fair” set of rules, but in real life our goals—freedom, equality, religious beliefs, environmental care, and identity—keep bumping into each other. Value pluralism simply says: that bumping-into isn’t a mistake; it’s how the world really works.

2. Core ideas at a glance

Concept	Essential Learnings
Value pluralism	Multiple, equally valid but incommensurable ends (freedom vs equality, mercy vs justice) coexist; no common metric ranks them.
Value neutrality	Classical liberal hope that a state can hover above competing ends; challenged as naïve once plural, clashing goods are admitted.
Incommensurability	You cannot convert liberty into equality “units.” Choices need judgment, not arithmetic.
Moral conflict	Such conflicts are permanent; the task is to adjudicate, not eradicate, them.

3. Foundational Thinkers & their contributions

Thinker	Key Contribution
Isaiah Berlin Two Concepts of Liberty	Laid out value pluralism; warned that monisms—utilitarian, Marxist, religious—breed tyranny.
John Gray	Calls for a modus vivendi politics: settlements without pretending to one “common good.”
Stuart Hampshire	Moral conflict is the human condition → democracy = institutionalised argument.
Thomas Nagel	Shows how plural ends complicate any single theory of justice.
Ronald Dworkin	Counters that diverse goods can still be woven into a coherent political scheme.
Martha Nussbaum	Urges a shared “capabilities” floor so pluralism does not slide into moral relativism.

4. Structural elements of value pluralism

Irreducible plurality – many universal values, none collapsible into another.
Inescapable conflict – trade-offs are real (classic liberty-equality tension).
No master scale – absence of a single arithmetic for ranking goods.
Positive diversity – modern disputes are ethical, cultural, not just religious; political order must acknowledge, not privatise, them.

5. Implications for liberal governance

Judgment over formula – policy-making is ethical triage, not spreadsheet optimisation.
Democratic deliberation – echoing Hampshire, only open argument can manage clashing goods.
Toleration upgraded – beyond “live and let live,” states need fair procedures for negotiating irreconcilables.

6. Critical debates

Challenge	Who raises it?	Reply from pluralists
Risk of moral relativism	Nussbaum, communitarian critics	A shared procedural ethic (rights, dialogue) can steer between absolutism & anything-goes.
Stalls decisive action	Policy pragmatists	Gray: aim for practical settlements, not perfection.
Values can be ranked	Dworkin	Rankings emerge within contexts; no eternal scale, yet coherent judgment possible.

7. Essential Learnings for answers

Cite Berlin for incommensurability.
Use Gray’s modus vivendi when asked how pluralism shapes institutions.
Quote Hampshire on democracy as conflict-resolution.
Reference Nussbaum or Dworkin to show pluralism ≠ paralysis.

Multiculturalism

1. What we mean by multiculturalism

At its heart it simply says: a political community can – and should – give public space to many cultures at once. That is deeper than value-pluralism (which talks of clashing values); here whole ways of life are at stake.

Essential learnings

Identity via culture – people find themselves through inherited languages, stories, rituals.
Co-existence, not assimilation – the goal is respectful side-by-side living, not one melting-pot monoculture.
Group-specific rights often follow: autonomy, vetoes, guaranteed seats, dress-code exceptions, etc.

2. Foundational thinkers & their key ideas

Thinker	Core insight
Will Kymlicka	Three‐part menu of minority rights – self-government, polyethnic, special representation – plus the plea for “societal cultures” as a basic good.
Charles Taylor	Politics of Recognition – equal dignity requires public affirmation of each culture.
Bhikhu Parekh	No single culture exhausts human possibility; dialogue + mutual respect must guide policy.

3. Why supporters defend it

Argument	Illustration
Humans are culturally made (Herder, communitarians)	Life-plans need a living culture to make sense.
Minorities risk majority tyranny	Ballot-box numbers alone can erase small cultures.
Diversity enriches all	Different knowledge systems, cuisines, arts, ecologies.
Safeguard against erosion	Without protective rights, weaker cultures fade under national mass culture.

4. Main concerns raised by critics

Objection	Voices & cases
Deepens divisions / weakens national glue	*Amartya Sen* (“ghettoisation”), Neil Bissoondath’s Selling Illusions.
Slips into moral relativism	*Susan Moller Okin* – harmful practices (FGM, forced marriage) can hide behind “culture”.
Fixes stereotypes, stifles dissent inside groups	*Aeyal Gross* on LGBT voices muted in some minorities.
Dilutes individual rights	Fear that collective claims trump personal freedom.

5. Kymlicka’s three kinds of minority rights

Self-governance – territorial autonomy for historic nations / Indigenous peoples.
Polyethnic rights – language, dress, holiday exemptions for immigrant communities.
Special representation – reserved seats, quotas, consultative councils to correct under-representation.

6. Reconciling equality with difference – the big dilemma

Multiculturalists say liberal “colour-blind” citizenship masks real disadvantage. True equality needs seeing difference and sometimes legislating for it.
Yet, as Dworkin and Nussbaum note in related debates, any group right must still pass a harm test and fit a wider framework of human dignity.

7. Parekh’s pluralist defence

Cultures are “conversations on how to live”; none has the whole truth.
Society should foster ongoing dialogue guided by three ground-rules: human dignity, mutual tolerance, procedural fairness.
Rights are not blank cheques: when a practice clearly violates those ground-rules, the wider polity must step in.

Post-modernism

1. What shifts with post-modernism?

Modern thought trusted reason, universal truth-claims and big “progress” stories. Post-modern writers say: reality is text-shaped, power-laden and permanently up for dispute. No single yard-stick, no final narrative.

2. Foundational thinkers and their lenses

Thinker	Lens / concept	Why it matters
Jacques Derrida	Deconstruction; différance	Shows every text is riddled with gaps and hierarchies; political canons can be read against themselves.
Jean-François Lyotard	Scepticism toward “grand narratives”	Marxism, Enlightenment, even liberal progress are just stories we tell to legitimise power.
Jean Baudrillard	Simulacra & hyper-reality	Media images replace the real; politics runs on spectacle more than substance.
Michel Foucault	Power/knowledge nexus; surveillance	Knowledge creates the realities it claims to describe; institutions discipline bodies.
Judith Butler	Performativity of identity	Gender, sex, self are repeated acts, not fixed essences – reshaping debates on rights & policy.
Chantal Mouffe & Ernesto Laclau	Radical democracy, post-Marxism	Shift from class-centric struggle to a plural front of anti-racist, feminist, ecological, civil-rights movements.

3. Focused analysis – key notions

Incommensurable meanings – language never settles; politics must live with ambiguity.
Critique of rational certainties – “truth” is an effect of discourse, not a neutral mirror.
From production to reproduction of images – public life increasingly staged, not lived (Baudrillard).
Every regime writes its own ‘science’ – Foucault’s clinics, prisons, censuses manufacture categories and obedience.
Identity is scripted, then repeated – Butler’s insight underpins today’s queer, trans, non-binary politics.
Radical democracy – Laclau & Mouffe’s call to link diverse struggles into a new, inclusive hegemony.

4. Main critiques to keep in view

Critic / angle	Objection
Habermas	Endless deconstruction erodes the common reasoning a democracy requires.
Martha Nussbaum	Butler’s dense relativism underplays concrete female oppression.
Many analysts	Extreme relativism → moral paralysis; opaque prose → elitism.

5. Why it still speaks today

Post-truth politics – when facts feel optional, Lyotard and Baudrillard help explain.
Algorithmic surveillance – Foucault’s panopticon morphs into the smartphone era.
Identity coalitions – Laclau/Mouffe offer a grammar for intersectional campaigns.

“End-ism” Debates

1. Why they matter

Across the Cold-War boom years three block-buster claims tried to declare politics settled:

Claim	Core points
End of Ideology (Bell, Aron, Lipset, Shils, Rostow)	Mature industrial democracies now solve problems technocratically; Left/Right grand ideas have fizzled.
End of History (Fukuyama)	Liberal-democratic capitalism is humanity’s last stop: no alternative can beat or replace it.
Clash of Civilizations (Huntington)	The next struggles won’t be ideological but cultural: big civilizational blocs will rub up against each other.

2. Foundational thinkers & themes

Thinker / text	What they argued	Focused Analysis
*Daniel Bell – The End of Ideology* (1960)**	Class conflict softened; welfare state accepted; politics becomes managerial.	Ideology → technocracy; parties blur.
*Raymond Aron – The Opium of the Intellectuals* (1955)**	Dogmatic ‘isms’ seduce intellectuals; realism beats utopia.	Warned against totalising creeds.
*S.M. Lipset – Political Man* (1960)**	Class struggle remains but minus fiery symbols; democracy moderates passions.	Ritual May-Day flags will fade.
Edward Shils	Modernity breeds centrist consensus.	Sociology of “civility”.
*W.W. Rostow – Stages of Economic Growth* (1960)**	All societies pass the same modernisation ladder; economics trumps ideology.	Linear “take-off” model.
*Francis Fukuyama – The End of History* (1989/92)**	With Soviet collapse, liberal democracy has no rival; only “last-man” problems remain.	Cites Kojève’s universal-state vision.
Samuel P. Huntington – “Clash” (1993/96)	Future wars = cultural fault-lines: Western, Confucian, Islamic, Hindu, Slavic-Orthodox, Japanese, Latin, African.	“West vs the Rest”; core-state leadership.

3. Key assertions & flashpoints

Technocratic convergence – welfare-state Keynesianism narrows partisan rifts (Bell, Lipset).
Ideological thaw in USSR – Western authors read de-Stalinisation as Marxism’s exhaustion.
Linear modernisation – Rostow’s five stages promise identical endpoints for all nations.
Liberal-democratic telos – Fukuyama sees no “systemic” challenger after 1989.
Civilisational lines – Huntington shifts the map from ideologies to culture–religion blocs.

4. Critical currents — Focused Analysis

Critic	Objection
Marxists (Marcuse, Althusser)	“End of Ideology” merely masks class power; ideology is structural, cannot ‘end’.
C. Wright Mills	Elites still weaponise ideology; public apathy ≠ ideological vacuum.
Edward Said	“Clash” is orientalising shorthand that caricatures the non-West.
Amartya Sen	People hold multiple identities; civilisations aren’t monoliths.
Žižek	Capitalist contradictions will spawn new ideologies; history far from over.
Robert Kagan	Ambition & conflict are human constants; no final settlement.

Other Dissenting Views:

Status-quo defence – “endism” serves centrist interests, dulls reform zeal.
Western-centrism – ignores anti-colonial, socialist, feminist, environmental waves outside West.
Democratic backslide & China’s rise – challenge liberal-democracy’s ‘final’ claim.

5. Where the debates land today

Post-2008 populism & democratic recession revive ideology talk.
Green politics, feminism, post-colonialism show new grand visions keep appearing.
US–China rivalry questions end-of-history optimism and civilizational fault-line fears.

Scholars Index

Practice Questions (Write before 4 p.m.)

Question 1. Discuss the end of Ideology debate. [2019/10m]

Question 2. Distinguish between liberal feminism and radical feminism. [2019/15m]

Question 3. Fascism displays an ambivalent stance towards parliamentary democracy. Explain. [2023/20m]

📌 Model answers drop this evening on the Telegram channel: https://t.me/psirbyamitpratap – keep notifications on.

See you tomorrow on Day 10. Keep practicing!

—Amit Pratap Singh & Team

A quick note on submissions of copies and mentorship

2025 Mains writers: Cohort 1 of O-AWFG kicks off 12 June and ATS on 15 June. The above practice set will serve as your revision tool, just do not miss booking your mentorship sessions for personalised feedback especially for starting tests. Come with your evaluated test copies.
2026 Mains writers – keep uploading through your usual dashboard. Act on the feedback and improve consistently.
Alternate between mini-tests (O-AWFG) and full mocks (ATS) has been designed to tackle speed, content depth, and structured revision—line-by-line evaluation pinpoints your weaknesses and errors. Follow your PSIR O-AWFG & ATS schedule and use the model answers to enrich your content, as rankers recommended based on their own success.

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