| Sumario: | The linguistic pluralism with its democratic enunciation has remained internal to the political processes of state formation in independent India. Konkani language acquires a distinctive status in debates on language-based political autonomy movements in twentieth-century India. As an inter-state, inter-regional language with scriptal plurality, it has a wider expanse with multilingual and multicultural historical ancestry and lineage. The Konkani controversy shows the magnitude of an interface between languages, scripts, regions and states having axial effects on the social, cultural and political survival and sustainability of languages in a multilingual country. The case of Konkani shows that language is not simply a means of communication but a marker of ethnic-regional identities and boundaries drawn around their linguistic differentiations. The question of Konkani language and script controversy is as much about the processes of linguistic democratization and mobilization. Konkani question is also one related to the linguistic–cultural right, linguistic equality, identity and democratic equity amidst linguistic plurality and its complex registers of identity formation and resistance. The conflict and consensus over Konkani language reveal dense and complex set of interlinkages between caste, class, community, religion, language and state and their uneasy alliances at various points of time in the making of the nation-state project of post-independence India.
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