The model of the nation-state as ethnically, culturally, and linguistically homogeneous is a Eurocentric conception, which bears little relation to the ground realities of nation-states in the Global South. In contrast to this paradigmatic conception, our volume centres and compares the multilingual nation-states of South Asia and the Horn of Africa. In this South-South comparison, we push back against the top-down model of the global diffusion of the idea of the nation-state as linguistically homogeneous, in which the world’s ‘peripheries’ are considered only in relation to hegemonic European ‘centres’. The chapters in this volume centre the multilingual nation-state of the Global South as the lens through which to view nation-states more broadly, including those in the Global North. They engage with the richness, depth, and complexity of national multilingualism in the Horn of Africa and South Asia, the different ways the nation-state has managed and dealt with it, and the creative and translational practices it has given rise to. In doing so, the chapters contribute to the decolonisation of the curriculum against the backdrop of the mainstreaming of xenophobic, right-wing ideologies celebrating the monolingual, monocultural nation-state in the Global North and, increasingly, in parts of the Global South.