What drives stone-pelters in Kashmir?

A helmet bobs up through the hatchway of a tactical vehicle — it is a policeman holding a point-and-shoot camera. At a stone's throw, Javed, a skinny young man, stood stoically with his arms crossed. Across the road, boys as young as 10, gather with their fists clenched. Many of them grin and hoot as they chase away the police jeep.

"What does the police expect to gain from taking pictures?" Javed asks as he limps through the narrow dusty pathway adjacent to a marsh in Srinagar's Eidgah area. As he slowly climbs the broken stairs of his barely furnished, unpainted single-storeyed house, he says: "They will identify the boys and beat them up. But do you think that will stop us from fighting this war?"

Stone-pelters have been chasing armed police on the Valley's streets since 2008 when this unusual weapon first became popular. Over the years, stone-pelting has become something of a cult. Some parents consent to their children joining these demonstrations, others can only watch helplessly.

"We are not afraid of death," declares Javed as he sits surrounded by his mother, siblings and friends. The sudden silence in the room is interrupted first by Javed's mother: "Yes, he is not scared of death" and then by his sisters: "What is there to be frightened of?" The family is currently living off its loss-making Pashmina shawl-weaving business.

In 2010, the stone-pelting phenomenon that led to the death of over 100 youth during clashes with the forces, was restricted to urban poor Sunni Muslim youth in Srinagar and the major towns of the valley. Most of it was directed by separatist leaders, especially Syed Ali Shah Geelani and Masrat Alam.

Following the death of Hizb commander Burhan Wani, stone-pelters burnt down police posts and stations and killed a policeman. This time, spontaneous stone-pelting was also reported from Shia areas like Budgam and villages like Tangmarg where separatists have hardly any influence. Though Geelani is revered among the youth, his calls for restraint haven't been effective of late.

Hundreds of masked youngsters were seen smashing vehicles and burning orchards and houses in south Kashmir villages. The stone-pelters faced lethal pellets and bullets, which left over 35 youth dead and hundreds gravely injured.

Are stone-pelters influenced by radical Wahhabi indoctrination? Javed insists that he and his family are traditional Hanafis. "We go to shrines. Our Islam was brought by Shah-i-Hamadhan to Kashmir 700 years ago. We want to save our Islam but we want to remain independent," says Javed, who took his Class 12 exams after a gap of a few years.

That he and many like him are undeterred by police thrashings and bullet and pellet injuries and above all, death, becomes apparent when Javed stretches out his prosthetic leg on the thinly carpeted floor of his sitting room.

Javed claims he was caught in the clashes between the stone-pelters and the forces in August 2008. He was 14 at the time. After he was hit by a bullet, the paramilitary allegedly didn't let anyone rescue him from the spot for half an hour. That caused excessive loss of blood and required the amputation of his right leg, he recalls. Since then, Javed, a state-level, gold medal winning fast-bowler, has purged all dreams of becoming a cricketer. "This is how India has created militants and stone-pelters here," says Javed. He claims that his aunt in Barbarshah area was killed at home by a BSF bullet. "She was no stone pelter," he points out.

Police officials who have studied stone pelting socio-economic demographics in the Valley blame poverty, unemployment, youth bulge, lack of entertainment resources and Saudi funded religious radicalisation for the violence.

Javed rubbishes this instantly, "When our children learn speaking, the first thing that they say on their own is 'azadi'. No one pays us."