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History Optional PYQ Master Pack · Model answer

Discuss critically the role Harsha played in the history of his times

  • UPSC 1989
  • Guptas, Vakatakas and Vardhanas

To assess Harsha's role is to weigh a genuine political achievement — reuniting a fractured north India for four decades — against a record of religious, administrative and military limitation that his own court poet had every reason to conceal.

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

  • Political unifier of a fractured landscape
  • Method of expansion: conquest combined with alliance
  • The administrative model: feudal decentralisation
  • Patron of religion, learning and diplomacy
  • The limits exposed by critical scrutiny
  • Weighing the balance

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