This chapter explores a tension in postcolonial Indian literature between the monolingual form of the nation and the multilingual tendencies of the linguistic regions through a comparison between the Sahitya Akademi’s (India’s national academy of letters) activities and Tamil putukkavitai (new poetry) writing. By promoting translation and constructing a Sanskritic literary past, the Akademi used literature to manage multilingualism and make it compatible with the monolingualism intrinsic to the nation. Putukkavitai writing, by contrast, epitomizes the challenge of linguistic regionalism to national integration, offerings a view of Indian multilingualism in less hierarchical terms than those expressed in Akademi discourses. To understand Tamil literature as Indian literature, the chapter proposes, requires taking the monolingual dimensions of the region into greater account. Tracing Tamil new poets’ engagement with new poetry in other Indian languages in the magazine Eḻuttu, the chapter argues that Indian multilingualism is built on shared experiences of linguistic alienation.