Answer the following questions in about 150 words each:
(a) Discuss the various proponents of Indian feudalism. (10 marks)
(b) Examine the defects in Alberuni's assessment of the Indian society. (10 marks)
(c) Discuss the importance of Sufic literatu

Question

Answer the following questions in about 150 words each:
(a) Discuss the various proponents of Indian feudalism. (10 marks)
(b) Examine the defects in Alberuni's assessment of the Indian society. (10 marks)
(c) Discuss the importance of Sufic literature as an important source of history. (10 marks)
(d) What factors do you attribute for the decline of the Delhi Sultanate? (10 marks)
(e) The motive of Alauddin Khalji's agrarian policy was to curb the powers of the intermediaries. Examine the measures which he adopted to achieve his objective. (10 marks)

UPSC Answer Check · Accepted Answer

(a) The debate on Indian feudalism is best understood through its proponents and their regional-chronological emphases. R.S. Sharma, in Indian Feudalism, argued that the early medieval period (c. 6th–12th centuries) was feudal, stressing land grants, caste hierarchy, village autonomy and the weakening of urban trade, with a pan-Indian but especially North Indian focus. D.D. Kosambi gave it a Marxist class-struggle framing, seeing early medieval agrarian expansion and slave/serf labour as producing feudal relations. B.N.S. Yadava extended the thesis to early medieval North Indian land-grant and caste structures, while R.N. Nandi applied it to early medieval Bengal’s agrarian and administrative change, and D.N. Jha examined early medieval Bihar’s grants and social hierarchy. Later critics—B.D. Chattopadhyaya’s processual Bengal focus and Harbans Mukhia’s anti-feudalism—tested the thesis but did not replace its core argument. Sharma’s model remains the baseline for examining early medieval land, caste, state and political economy.

(b) Alberuni’s assessment is valuable but defective. His Brahmanical bias is evident because he relied heavily on Sanskrit texts and Brahmanical informants, so his picture of “Hindu” society is often a textual, priestly ideal rather than lived practice. His social penetration was limited: he observed mainly elite, urban and courtly circles, and could not adequately represent peasants, artisans, women, lower castes or regional variations. His method was text-centric: he used Smriti, Puranas and Sanskrit learning to explain institutions, sometimes treating scriptural norms as actual customs. His religious prejudice led him to judge Indian practices by Islamic standards, producing ethnocentric condemnations of idolatry, caste, sati and social customs. These comparisons were not anachronistic, since he wrote about contemporary 11th-century India, but they were ethnocentric and normative. Thus his work is a source for elite knowledge and cross-cultural comparison, but not a neutral social survey.

(c) Sufic literature is important because it records religious, social and cultural processes that court chronicles often omit. Hagiographies such as Amir Khusrau’s Tazkirat al-Awliya preserve details of saintly networks, patronage, Sufi orders and the interaction of Sufis with rulers and local communities. Sufi poetry and letters reveal syncretic ideas, popular devotion, language change and the moral vocabulary of medieval Indian society. They also help trace the spread of Sufism from gharis to urban khanqahs, and the negotiation between Sufi authority and state power. These sources must be distinguished from courtly Persian works: Khusrau’s Khazain-ul-Futuh is court panegyric/historical poetry, Barani’s Fatawa-i-Jahandari is a political-theological treatise, and Sijzi’s Fawa’id-ul-Fu’ad is a historical/administrative chronicle. They are valuable for administrative practices and political thought, but they are not Sufic literature. Read critically, Sufic texts provide social history, syncretism and the inner life of medieval religion, while courtly texts supply the state framework in which Sufis operated.

(d) The decline of the Delhi Sultanate was both immediate and structural. The immediate shock was Timur’s invasion of 1398, which devastated Delhi, destroyed military prestige and encouraged provincial disintegration. But structural weaknesses had already weakened the state. The iqta system made the army dependent on fiefs; iqtadars often withheld revenue, resisted transfer and turned military land grants into quasi-hereditary power, reducing central control. Factionalism among nobles, especially after weak successors in the Tughlaq and Sayyid periods, produced palace intrigues, rebellions and loss of provincial loyalty. Zamindar resurgence, as local landholders and tribal chiefs asserted autonomy, further eroded the sultanate’s fiscal and administrative base. Economic crisis—over-taxation, disrupted trade, famine and monetary instability—reduced revenue and popular support. The emergence of regional sultanates in Gujarat, Bengal and Jaunpur completed the fragmentation. Thus Timur’s raid was the final blow to a state already undermined by fiscal, military and political decay.

(e) Alauddin Khalji’s agrarian policy aimed to reduce the fiscal and political power of intermediaries between the state and the peasant. His central measure was direct assessment of kharaj: officials measured land, fixed revenue and reduced the discretion of local amils, muqaddams and other revenue intermediaries who could manipulate accounts. He also reformed iqta: by revoking, consolidating and reassigning iqtas, he prevented iqtadars from building hereditary, autonomous power bases and made military land grants more dependent on the sultan. These measures brought revenue and military resources closer to the centre. Market control through the shahna-i-mandi, price fixation and espionage were broader administrative tools; they helped the state monitor prices and bypass intermediaries, but they were not strictly agrarian measures. Their relevance to curbing intermediaries was indirect, by limiting local elites’ profits from grain and revenue flows. On balance, Alauddin’s agrarian reforms centralised revenue, though their long-term success was limited by resistance and continuing local power.

Answer the following questions in about 150 words each: (a) Discuss the various proponents of Indian feudalism. (10 marks) (b)…

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