India's Modi seeks to soothe Muslims as death toll rises to at least 25

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi sought on Sunday to reassure India's Muslims as a wave of deadly protests against a new citizenship law put his Hindu nationalist government under pressure like never before.

At least 25 people have been killed in 10 days of demonstrations and violence after Modi's government passed the law criticised as anti-Muslim. More protests took place on Sunday.

Addressing his Bharatiya Janata Party [BJP] supporters in New Delhi, who cried "Modi! Modi!" at the mention of the law, the 69-year-old said Muslims "don't need to worry at all" –– provided they are genuine Indians.

"Muslims who are sons of the soil and whose ancestors are the children of mother India need not to worry" about the law and his plans to carry out a national register of citizens, Modi told the crowd of thousands.

Accusing the main opposition Congress party and what he said were "urban Naxals" of condoning the recent violence by not condemning it, Modi said opponents were "spreading rumours that all Muslims will be sent to detention camps."

"There are no detention centres. All these stories about detention centres are lies, lies, and lies," he said.

Strongest show of dissent

Modi's rally comes a day after at least nine people were killed in clashes with police in northern Uttar Pradesh province,  local police spokesman Pravin Kumar said. He said most of the victims were young people but denied police were responsible.

“Some of them died of bullet injuries, but these injuries are not because of police fire. The police have used only tear gas to scare away the agitating mob,” he said.

Around a dozen vehicles were set on fire as protesters rampaged through the northern cities of Rampur, Sambhal, Muzaffarnagar, Bijnore, and Kanpur, where a police station was also torched, Singh said.

The backlash against the law marks the strongest show of dissent against the Hindu nationalist government of Modi since he was first elected in 2014.

The law allows Hindus, Christians and other religious minorities who are in India illegally to become citizens if they can show they were persecuted because of their religion in Muslim-majority Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. It does not apply to Muslims.

Critics have slammed the legislation as a violation of India's secular constitution and have called it the latest effort by the Modi government to marginalise the country's nearly 200 million Muslims. 

Modi has defended the law as a humanitarian gesture.

Uttar Pradesh state is controlled by Modi's ruling BJP.

Police have imposed a British colonial-era law banning the assembly of more than four people statewide. The law was also imposed elsewhere in India to thwart an expanding protest movement demanding the revocation of the citizenship law.

We speak with journalist Ishan Garg about Indian PM Modi remaining bullish over the controversial law.

Media advisory 

India's Ministry of Information and Broadcasting issued an advisory on Friday night asking broadcasters across the country to refrain from using content that could inflame further violence. The ministry asked for “strict compliance."

The demonstrations have been largely peaceful but protesters have also hurled rocks and torched vehicles, while heavy-handed police tactics including the storming of a Delhi university a week ago have fuelled anger.

Tens of thousands of protests gathered late Saturday in the southern city of Hyderabad, while other protests were held elsewhere. Yet more took place or were scheduled on Sunday, including in Delhi and Kolkata.

Mass arrests

More than 7,500 people have either been detained under emergency laws or arrested for rioting, according to state officials, with 5,000 in Uttar Pradesh state alone where 17 people have been killed.

Some 500 people have also been injured in Uttar Pradesh including 263 police, while two people were shot dead in the southern state of Karnataka and six died in Assam in the northeast last week.

In Assam, opponents of the legislation fear it will enable large numbers of Bengali-speaking immigrants, many of whom are Hindu, to settle there.

But elsewhere, opponents say the law has made religion a test for citizenship ahead of a nationwide register that Modi wants to carry out by 2024 to remove all "infiltrators."

The demonstrations also follow a contentious process in Assam meant to weed out foreigners living in the country illegally. Nearly 2 million people were excluded from an official list of citizens, about half Hindu and half Muslim, and have been asked to prove their citizenship or else be considered foreign.

US expresses concern

The US State Department this week urged New Delhi to "protect the rights of its religious minorities in keeping with India's constitution and democratic values".

Modi's government, re-elected in May, has defended the law saying it is meant to help "persecuted" minorites from Muslim-majority Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Afghanistan.

Protests against the law come amid an ongoing crackdown in Muslim-majority Kashmir, the restive Himalayan region stripped of its semi-autonomous status and demoted from a state into a federal territory in August.

India is building a detention center for some of the tens of thousands of people who the courts are expected to ultimately determine have entered illegally. Modi’s interior minister, Amit Shah, has pledged to roll out the process nationwide.

"First, we will bring the Citizenship Amendment Bill and will give citizenship to the Hindu, Buddhist, Sikh, Jain and Christian refugees, the religious minorities from the neighbouring nations. Then, we will implement NRC to flush out the infiltrators from our country," Shah said in an election speech last April.

On Sunday, Modi denied the existence of a detention centre, accusing the Congress party of spreading fear. He also said that his opponents resented him for his work strengthening India's ties to Iran, Saudi Arabia, and other Islamic countries.