1 The Pain of Historiography: The Naming of Indo-Anglian Literature Susheel Kumar Sharma* Professor of English University of Allahabad Allahabad -211002 (UP) India M: 09450868483, 09140770535, 08173872609 <susheelsharma.avap@gmail.com > and <sksharma@allduniv.ac.in > In the introduction to his anthology The Vintage Book of Indian Writing Rushdie has used several appellations for the body of literature in English in India viz. Indo-Anglian, Indo-English, Indian writing in English, English-language Indian writing, English-language Literature, Indian novel in English and for the contributors, Indian writers working in English, English-language writer of Indian origin and non-english-languge Indian writers. (x-xxii) M K Naik, whose canvas of study is much larger than that of Rushdie, is also conscious of the difficulty in choosing a name for this hybrid literature: ―Another problem which the historian of this literature has to face is that of choosing from among the various appellations … ‗Indo-Anglian literature‘, ‗Indian Writing in English‘, ‗Indo-English Literature‘ and ‗Indian English Literature‘.‖(4) P K Rajan too hints at the importance of the issue of naming this literature when he writes: ―In the earlier critical scene the nomenclature of this literature itself was a topic of prolonged discussion. Indo- Anglian, or Indo-English, or Indian English, or Indian Literature in English?‖ (12) In a different vein and tenor Arvind K Mehrotra writes: ―Indians have been writing verse in English at least since the 1820s and it goes under many ludicrous names -- Indo-English, India-English, Indian- English, Indo-Anglian, and even Anglo-Indian and Indo-Anglican. ‗Kill that nonsense term‘, Adil Jussawalla said of Indo-Anglian, and ‗kill it quickly.‘‖ (Oxford 1) Though Rajan opines that ―… it is pointless to continue the debate any further‖ (12) yet from the point of the historiography of a literature which is almost 225 year old it is important to go through the literature and debates to understand the etymological evolution of the terms and names that we rather consider insignificant and therefore tend to use them carelessly. Due to constraints of time and space I propose to ruminate on one only i.e. ―Indo-Anglian‖. In her article ―How to Read a ‗Culturally Different‘ Book‖ Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak makes two claims: a) ―In the late 1950s, the term ‗Indo-Anglian‘ was coined by the Writer‘s Workshop Collective in Calcutta, under the editorship of P. Lal, to describe Indian writing in