I read people who help make things that are seemingly easy, as complex and difficult as possible

False Opposition Dipesh Chakrabarty The Times of India 9 Dec, 2006 Editorial

I often find that I make two rather opposed demands on myself in my professional life. But they are both important, not mutually exclusive. When I perform the role of a teacher, I find that my task is to make that which looks complex and forbiddingly difficult, easy to grasp. But when I myself act as an inquirer into societies and their pasts, I need to challenge myself intellectually.

Then I read people who help make things that are seemingly easy, as complex and difficult as possible (complexity, clarity, and subtlety can coexist in the same text). These are the people I turn to when I feel the need to have all my preconceptions challenged. Sometimes these challenges arise from new facts, oftentimes from working through unfamiliar and difficult ideas. In Indian history, D D Kosambi and Ranajit Guha have often performed that role for me. I would never think of demanding of such authors that they always wrote in prose that I could just idly consume.

I wonder why authors and journalists who write derisively about professional historians and who insist that we all must write in the style of a Dalrymple (all credit to him for what he has achieved) forget that what gives any field the strength and capacity to flourish is diversity — diversity of approaches, topics, methods, and expository styles. A healthy spirit of competition is one that embraces diversity as a value. The writer is Lawrence A Kimpton distinguished ervice professor at the University of Chicago.