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History Optional PYQ Master Pack · Model answer

Critically analyze the changing nature of caste and gender relations during the early medieval period

  • UPSC 2018
  • Early Medieval India, 750-1200

Early medieval India (c. 750–1200 CE) has often been dismissed in older colonial historiography as a static, "dark age" society; a closer reading of inscriptions, legal digests and literary texts instead shows caste and gender relations undergoing real, if unevenly distributed, transformation — driven largely by agrarian expansion, land grants and regional cultural divergence —…

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What the full answer covers

  • Caste: Proliferation and Fragmentation of the Varna Order
  • Gender: Hardening Norms Amid Uneven Elite Exceptions
  • A Critical Assessment: Uniformity versus Regional and Class Unevenness

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