Hello students,

Most of you have come to this channel through the Youtube channel dedicated History Optional. This channel was started by LevelUp IAS merely 6-7 months ago. As it appears, it is about touching 9000 subscribers and it is already India's largest channel exclusively for History Optional students.

(For those who don't know, here is the link to the History Optional YT Channel)

Please understand that we both, Vishal sir and me, are teachers. We are not content creators or podcasters. Our main objective is to restrict ourself to UPSC CSE demand, although occasionally we end up going perilously close to the limits of its requirement. But I am sure this only helps in deepening our understanding of History as a subject. I am also told that there are many students from various Universities pursuing their BA/MA in History, who also have joined this channel. Some students are also preparing for UGC exam or for state PCS exams. We are only happy to be useful.

Coming to the main point, I guess you all understand the courage it took us to put our entire Optional Foundation course on youtube for everyone. I have been teaching for last 10-11 years now and Vishal sir also almost similar duration. Before coming to LevelUp IAS, he taught in at least half a dozen states to a vast number of students. I used to teach in Vajiram and Ravi and then joined LevelUp IAS. In 2024, we decided to go on Youtube with the entire course. Our idea was two-fold. (1) To reach maximum number of students across India who dont have access to good quality of teaching (self presumptuous..:)) and (2) Refocus our efforts on students at the level of skill building of answer writing, content enrichment, tests and mentorship which requires more time. Daily Foundation classes were not allowing us time to do that earlier. But now we have time for it.

Both Vishal sir and I were also able to come in touch with many new students in this last 6 months. From every nook and corner of India. It was immensely rewarding journey to both of us as well. At personal level, we are also able to read more history books and enrich our content now with more time at disposal.

Now it is almost the end of January 2025. Our entire Foundation course is in public domain. The remaining lectures will be broadcasted in next few days. In this last 6-7 months, except for 2 days where we delayed the posting of the lectures by an hour, there was not a single miss. It was an immense amount of background work and I thank everyone at LevelUp IAS for their relentless, disciplined and creative support.

As most of you are watching these lectures on YT every day, I only request that you like/share and most importantly write comments, either positive, negative, doubts, whatever. Consider this as token of appreciation or guru dakshina of kind. If you write at least one comment for every video you watch, it helps us reach more students. Although we are not podcasters or youtubers, we still cannot escape the rules of Youtube platform.

As our Foundation lectures are coming close, we are planning newer projects for the channel. And in that, wider reach is going to help us a lot. Please consider the request favourably.

Thank you,
Nikhil Sheth
LevelUp IAS

https://www.indiatoday.in/amp/science/story/did-sanskrit-originate-in-india-its-roots-trace-back-to-modern-day-russia-2677523-2025-02-10

Yamnaya thesis (Aryan Homeland) is getting modified a bit. To multiple nearby locations and multiple waves of migration.

https://youtu.be/uBL61kbhwNI


Some of you were inquiring about how to prepare art and culture separately for Mains. It is a matter of fact that if you see PYQs properly, we realize that AnC for GS1 is sometimes deeper and more profound that that in History Optional. It needs a different preparation for GS.

So here is the approach. I think this orientation will provide proper direction with regards to that. Do watch it completely.

https://youtu.be/-6D517EXbxA

Nikhil is trying to be a podcaster with such heavy topics. Feedback in the form of YT Comments will be most appreciated.