Language serves as a vital tool for communication, enabling interaction within and across communities, and plays a key role in socialization and international relations. India is multilingual with individuals often speaking multiple languages belonging to diverse linguistic communities, coexisting and interacting in shared spaces. India is also known since centuries for its linguistically rich social life and a deep cultural engagement with linguistic practices such as grammar, poetry, and literature. However, in recent times, language has become central to political debates, influencing state formation and identity politics. Conflicts such as the Cauvery water dispute and the Karnataka-Maharashtra border issue have evolved into linguistic identity struggles between Kannada, Tamil, and Marathi speakers. These developments raise critical questions about how language-related conflicts should be understood in post-independence India. This research suggests that these tensions emerge from viewing language through a European notion of the ‘nation’ in association with ideas such as religion, ethnicity and language. This project further aims to revisit and explain the role of language in relation to governance in pre-colonial India by examining its function in state structures before the arrival of colonial rule, drawing from available resources including inscriptions and other scholarly engagements in the field.