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History Optional PYQ Master Pack · Model answer

“Both freedom and partition were the work of Indian middle classes.” Comment.

  • UPSC 1998
  • Politics of Separatism

The statement locates a single social class — the Indian middle classes — as the common agent behind both the national movement that won freedom and the communal politics that produced Partition, a reading most closely associated with the Cambridge School's "elite competition" framework.

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What the full answer covers

  • The Cambridge School Case for Middle-Class Agency
  • The Counter-Reading: Popular and Subaltern Agency
  • Weighing the Two Accounts
  • Conclusion

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