Its Constitution recognises eight regional languages, and the number of dialects spoken is much larger. If the interests and urges of a people with such diverse identities could be reconciled, the diversities themselves would have been a great source of strength for the State. But the failure to recognise and reconcile them became its biggest weakness. First, these diversities are not widely known. Secondly, there has been an overemphasis on only one kind of identity - the one based on religion.
Nobody can deny the role of religion and religion-based identities in shaping human behaviour.
But no identity is monolithic, and there are other identities that cut across religious identities and sometimes play a more decisive and healthier role than the religious identity in determining this behaviour. For a variety of reasons the Kashmir Valley has a pivotal place in the politics of the State. Not only does the rest of the world know the State by this name but Kashmiri-speaking leaders have represented it nationally and internationally and led all the governments in the State since Independence. Although almost all Kashmiris are Muslims after the migration of Kashmiri Pandits, who constituted barely 5 per cent of the population of the Valley, they are proudly conscious of their uninterrupted history of 5,000 years. No other community in the subcontinent can make such a claim.