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History Optional PYQ Master Pack · Model answer

Was the state in the Sultanate period a theocracy? Discuss the new orientation of state policies and administrative principles under Muhammad bin Tughluq

  • UPSC 1988
  • The Fourteenth Century

A theocracy, strictly defined, is a state where sovereignty rests in religious law and its clerical interpreters, with the ruler acting merely as an executor of divinely revealed injunctions. Judged against that definition, the Delhi Sultanate was not a true theocracy: its sultans consistently subordinated the shara to raison d'état whenever the two conflicted, borrowing…

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What the full answer covers

  • The Case Against Theocracy
  • Islamic Language as Legitimating Veneer, Not Governing Principle
  • Muhammad bin Tughluq's Rationalist New Orientation
  • A Composite Bureaucracy Breaking the Turkish-Aristocratic Monopoly

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