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History Optional PYQ Master Pack · Model answer

“Orientalism produced a knowledge [of] the past to service the needs of the Colonial State.” Elucidate.

  • UPSC 2011
  • Social and Cultural Developments

British Orientalism styled itself as sympathetic scholarship on India's ancient past, yet its deeper function was to manufacture a usable past that legitimised and eased colonial governance.

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

  • Administrative Efficiency: Governing Through "Indianised" Knowledge
  • Placating Indian Sentiment and Manufacturing Consent
  • The Aryan Theory: Kinship as Moral Justification for Empire
  • Racial Theory: From Kinship to Hierarchy
  • Exceptions That Prove the Rule

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