In the capital city, about 20,000 Muslims, some waving pictures of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and replicas of AK-47 rifles shouted slogans against US President George W. Bush, witnesses said.

Police in riot gear intervened after some of the protesters, led by Maulana Syed Ahmad Bukhari, tried to march on the Kuwait Embassy to lodge a protest. Police arrested Bukhari and his close aides, witnesses and police said.

“America’s barbaric attack on Iraq would not have been possible had not Kuwait provided them logistical support ... The whole world is seeing Kuwait’s hand in the massacre of Iraqi Muslims,” Bukhari screamed from a police van. Communists were also up in arms yesterday and thousands of followers of the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) gathered here.

“We want the US-led coalition forces to immediately withdraw from Iraq. The Indian government should also condemn the war and strongly take up the issue with the United Nations,” said Swadesh Bhattacharya, CPI (ML) leader.

Communists staged similar protests in other cities, including Madras, Guwahati and Ranchi, he said. Tens of thousands of pro-communist students in Calcutta boycotted classes and joined a mammoth rally in the eastern city, witnesses said.

Waving red flags, they held up placards that read “No more blood for oil” and “War-monger Bush, stop; the world needs food, not war”.

Sudip Sengupta, president of the pro-communist Students Federation of India said students from 430 colleges and 13 universities in the state of West Bengal boycotted classes yesterday in protest.

In Kashmir, the nation’s only Muslim-majority state, police had to use batons and teargas to control 2,000 Muslim anti-war protesters at different sites in Srinagar after Friday prayers.

One of the rallies took place near the shrine of Sufi saint Sheikh Abdul Qadir Geelani, who is buried in Baghdad and revered by Kashmiri Muslims.

In the northern town of Lucknow, hundreds of Muslims dragged an effigy of Bush into the road, chanting “Murderer of innocent Iraqi Muslims, take this”.

“All that America wants is to make smaller nations their puppets,” Syed Mushir Ali, a local Muslim leader, told the gathering. Muslims also protested in the Taj Mahal city of Agra, in the southern state of Tamil Nadu and in the central city of Bhopal, where 2,500 men and women gathered at a mosque to pray for an Iraqi victory.

A group of protesters burned photographs of Bush and chanted slogans in Bombay, India’s business hub. In southern Andhra Pradesh state, anti-war protesters forced the closure of a water bottling unit owned by US soft drink giant Coca-Cola.

Hundreds of protesters marched on the Kinley water bottling plant in Sattupalli in Khammam district, 250 kilometers (155 miles) north of Hyderabad, the state capital, Thursday and forced it to stop production through to Friday.