UPHESC Assistant Professor History 2025 PYQs

Concept: The Planning Commission was set up by a Cabinet resolution on 15 March 1950 with Nehru as chairman.

1. It was replaced by NITI Aayog on 1 January 2015.
2. The First Five Year Plan started in April 1951.

Short trick: 15-3-1950 Planning Commission; 1-1-2015 NITI Aayog.

Concept: The African National Congress (founded 1912) led the struggle against apartheid; Nelson Mandela became South Africa’s first black President in 1994.

1. Banned 1960–90; armed wing Umkhonto we Sizwe (1961).
2. Freedom Charter adopted in 1955.

Short trick: ANC – Mandela – 1994.

Concept: An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations was published in 1776; Book IV attacks the ‘mercantile system’.

1. 1776 is also the year of the American Declaration of Independence.
2. 1676 is before Smith’s birth (1723); 1876 after his death (1790).

Short trick: 1776 – Wealth of Nations + American Independence.

Concept: The Cold War was a ‘war of nerves’ (Hindi snayu yuddh) – a struggle of pressure, propaganda and threats short of actual fighting. In Indian textbooks this description is attributed to US Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, the diplomat of ‘brinkmanship’.

1. Walter Lippmann was a journalist who popularised the term ‘Cold War’ (1947), not a diplomat.
2. Nehru and Tito led non-alignment, standing outside the Cold War blocs.

Short trick: Dulles – brinkmanship – war of nerves.

Concept: Herbert Butterfield, critic of the ‘Whig interpretation of history’, insisted that the historian must study the past for its own sake, impartially – objectivity is the very language of history.

1. Croce – ‘All history is contemporary history’ (subjective stress).
2. E. H. Carr – objectivity is only relative; history is a dialogue between historian and facts.

Short trick: Butterfield = anti-Whig, pro-objectivity.

Concept: The Molotov–Ribbentrop (Nazi–Soviet Non-Aggression) Pact was signed in Moscow on 23 August 1939.

1. Its secret protocol divided Poland and Eastern Europe.
2. Germany invaded Poland on 1 September 1939 – the start of WWII.

Short trick: 23 Aug pact → 1 Sept invasion of Poland.

Concept: E. H. Carr, in What is History? (1961), defined history as ‘a continuous process of interaction between the historian and his facts, an unending dialogue between the present and the past’.

1. G. R. Elton (The Practice of History) opposed Carr’s relativism.
2. G. J. Renier wrote History: Its Purpose and Method; W. H. Walsh wrote on philosophy of history.

Short trick: Carr = ‘unending dialogue’.

Concept: After the Muzaffarpur bomb (1908), police raided the Maniktala garden house; in the resulting Alipore (Maniktala) Bomb Conspiracy Case Aurobindo Ghosh was named the principal accused.

1. Defended by C. R. Das, Aurobindo was acquitted (1909); Barindra Kumar Ghosh and Ullaskar Dutt were sentenced.
2. Prafulla Chaki had already died (shot himself) in 1908; B. K. Dutt belongs to 1929.

Short trick: Maniktala garden → Alipore case → Aurobindo (C. R. Das defended).

Concept: Mussolini founded the Fasci Italiani di Combattimento (‘Italian League/Bands of Combat’) in Milan on 23 March 1919 – the nucleus of the Fascist Party (1921).

1. After the March on Rome (1922) he became Prime Minister.
2. Hitler joined the German Workers’ Party in 1919; Karl Lueger, Vienna’s mayor, died in 1910.

Short trick: Fasci di Combattimento = combat league = Mussolini, 1919.

Concept: Feudalism declined because royal power increased (rise of strong national monarchies), not decreased.

1. Black Death (1348) – labour shortage freed serfs.
2. Gunpowder – castles and knights became obsolete.
3. Crusades – nobles died or sold lands; trade and towns revived.
4. A weak king was the very condition in which feudalism flourished.

Short trick: Strong king = weak feudal lords.