NEW DELHI — Tens of thousands of Indians waving black and white flags and chanting "Death to Bush!" rallied today in New Delhi to protest a visit by President Bush.

Surindra Singh Yadav, a senior police officer in charge of crowd control, said as many as 100,000 people, most of them Muslim, had gathered in a fairground in central New Delhi ordinarily used for political rallies.

"Whether Hindu or Muslim, the people of India have gathered here to show our anger. We have only one message — killer Bush go home," one of the speakers, Hindu politician Raj Babbar, told the crowd.

Bush arrives in India later today for a three-day visit focused on strengthening the emerging strategic partnership between India and the United States. Dozens of protests have been planned by Islamic leaders and communist politicians.

While Bush remains more popular in India than he is in many other countries, some here object to U.S. policies, especially in Iraq and Afghanistan. India, an overwhelmingly Hindu nation of more than 1 billion people, has the world's second-largest population of Muslims.

Today's protesters carried placards that read: "Bully Bush, Go Home," and "Death to America, Death to Bush."

Police, some of them armed with rifles, were heavily deployed around the fairground. As the rally grew, protesters charged a stage where about 200 Muslim leaders were waiting to speak, knocking over television cameras.

On Tuesday, about 1,000 Muslims demonstrated in Bombay, some waving placards reading "Devil Bush Go Back," with caricatures of Bush as a cross between Superman and Satan — dressed in the superhero's red-and-blue costume with devil's horns and clutching a missile.

Some mosques in the southern Indian city of Hyderabad, where Bush will visit Friday, have already unfurled banners protesting his arrival and plan to chant verses from the Quran in hopes that it will drive him away.

Muslim groups also have called for a daylong strike to protest Bush's visit to Hyderabad, a key center of India's booming information technology industry. Muslims account for nearly 40 percent of the city's 7 million people.