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History Optional PYQ Master Pack · Model answer

‘Akbar built the Mughal Empire by enlisting the support of the Rajputs, Aurangzeb destroyed it by alienating the Rajputs.’ Do you agree?

  • UPSC 2003
  • Mughal Empire in the Seventeenth Century

The statement compresses a century and a half of Mughal history into a single cause-and-effect claim, and like most such compressions it is broadly right in direction but overstated in degree.

You are reading the opening of the model answer. The full answer is part of the History Optional PYQ Master Pack.

What the full answer covers

  • The Rajputs as Empire-Builders under Akbar
  • Institutional Anchors: Why the Alliance Held for a Century
  • Aurangzeb's Institutional Unravelling
  • Was Alienation the "Destroyer"? A Historiographical Qualification

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