NEW DELHI — Tens of thousands of protesters defied a government curfew on Thursday to march in the streets of Guwahati, the largest city in India’s northeast, demonstrating against the passage of the contentious Citizenship Amendment Bill, which will grant citizenship to thousands of migrants on religious grounds.

The protests broke out on Wednesday after the bill was passed by the upper house of India’s Parliament, and quickly turned violent. Protesters set two train stations on fire, clashed with security forces, blocked national highways, burned vehicles and attacked the home of the highest-ranking government official in Guwahati, the capital of the state of Assam. The government imposed a curfew Wednesday night and deployed hundreds of army personnel across the northeastern states of Assam and Tripura, where demonstrations also occurred, while shutting down the internet.

But the government show of force only seemed to enrage protesters further, with larger numbers of demonstrators gathering on Thursday. Protesters are angered that the bill will grant citizenship to thousands of Hindu, Christian, Jain, Buddhist and Sikh migrants from some neighboring countries where New Delhi says they are religiously persecuted. Demonstrators say this will flood their hometowns with unwanted foreigners.

The bill will make it harder for Muslim migrants to attain Indian citizenship, although many Muslims are also discriminated against in neighboring countries. Critics fear the bill will be used to harass Indian Muslims by forcing them to pass a citizenship test and prove their family’s lineage in the country while giving a blanket pass to people of most other religions. The bill is expected to be signed into law in the coming days.

But the protesters in Assam and Tripura say the bill will dilute their numbers by naturalizing Hindus from neighboring Bangladesh who fled to India decades ago, during their country’s civil war. Although Assam and Tripura are majority Hindu states, their populations tend to be more concerned about safeguarding their unique ethnic makeup and linguistic heritage, rather than helping coreligionists from other countries.

Hiren Gohain, a retired professor in Guwahati, denounced what he called an arbitrary bill by the government that had little public support, but only sought to reinforce the Indian government’s quest to unravel India’s secular underpinnings. Critics say the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, or B.J.P., has discriminated against Muslims in India and point to the bill as proof of the state’s attempts to harass the minority, which represents 14 percent of the country. But government officials say the bill is a humanitarian effort to provide shelter to religiously persecuted minorities.

“There had been no demand from any quarter in India for this Citizenship Amendment Bill. It was unilaterally introduced by the B.J.P., which has brought the bill to polarize people among communal lines and extinguish the very national existence and culture of Assam,” said Mr. Gohain in a telephone interview.

In Assam, the government shut down the internet on Wednesday and Thursday, securing India’s spot as the country with the most internet blackouts in the world. India, the world’s largest democracy, was responsible for 67 percent of the world’s internet shutdowns last year, with 134 incidents according to Access Now, a digital information advocacy center. So far this year, India has had 89 internet blackouts, some lasting months, as in Kashmir, where the internet was shut down for 133 days after the government stripped the territory of its autonomy in August.

“India has been leading in the world when it comes to shutting down internet,” said Apar Gupta, the executive director of the Internet Freedom Foundation, a digital rights advocacy forum. “The number of days, the number of times the internet was shut down, areas in which it was shut down — they have all been increasing year on year, with 2019 seeing the maximum number of shutdowns as compared to previous years.”

India’s Ministry of Information and Broadcasting directed TV channels on Wednesday to refrain from broadcasting protests or any “anti-national” content, a move critics say is part of government efforts to stamp out opposition. The order came as the live TV station for the upper house of Parliament cut out when opposition lawmakers heckled the home minister, Amit Shah, who is behind the Citizenship Amendment Bill.

Earlier this year, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government tried to push a similar citizenship bill. But the legislation stalled after many politicians objected to the religious dimension of the bill and the possibility that a large number of Hindu Bengalis would be made citizens, giving them the right to acquire land.

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