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History Optional PYQ Master Pack · Model answer

India has been the world leader in the field of hand spun and hand woven yarn and cloth for many centuries. Many nationalist and Marxist critiques considered that the British dominion deliberately shattered the traditional and world famous handicrafts of India. Comment.

  • UPSC 2021
  • Economic Impact of British Colonial Rule

India's pre-colonial textile economy was not a marginal cottage craft but a globally dominant industry, and the debate over its collapse remains one of the sharpest fault lines in colonial economic historiography.

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What the full answer covers

  • The Scale and Organisation of the Pre-Colonial Textile Economy
  • The Nationalist-Marxist Case: Mechanisms of Deliberate Destruction
  • The Revisionist Counter-Case
  • Weighing the Evidence

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