How Architecture Marginalizes Muslims in India?

In this thought-provoking conversation, Fahad Zubairi, PhD Scholar at MIT, USA, discusses the growing politics of demolition, marginalisation, and space in contemporary India. He explains why the term “punitive domicide” better captures the bulldozer demolitions targeting specific communities, describing them not as administrative actions but as forms of political violence. The discussion moves beyond isolated incidents to examine the legal, historical, and philosophical structures enabling such practices. Drawing on thinkers like Hannah Arendt, Fahad reflects on how public spaces are shrinking for minorities and how law, politics, and architecture intersect to shape power. The podcast also explores deeper questions of archaeology, history, and identity—from Sir Syed’s intellectual legacy to Ambedkar’s experiences of space and caste. Fahad argues that architecture is never neutral; it reflects political imagination and social control. This conversation unpacks how time, space, and law come together to produce exclusion—and what resistance might look like in such a landscape.