UC Berkeley

Converging on the role of the mobility and settlement practices in the forming of cities, Indian Muslims live in Delhi at the periphery, in marginal spaces or ‘borderlands’. This dissertation explores how Muslim areas are perceived as tumultuous sites for migration, architecture of a simmering violence, and spatial reserves of religious-cultural built environment since the twentieth century. This dissertation contributes in examining the spatial production of Muslim neighborhoods in India.

I employ the term globalizing Delhi to indicate a nested idea of the global starting from the neighborhood, up through the city, the nation and the world. In particular, globalizing implies a perspectival angle of studying the processes of the neighborhood at the margins of Delhi. Rather than the global cities argument, I bracket an emerging Asia that simultaneously develops a global form of state-sponsored urban reform shaping a formal agglomeration within the postcolonial city and importantly there are large peripheries of informal spaces, neighborhoods where Muslims participate in everyday urban experiences.

The central focus of the dissertation is marginality and its relation with the built environment. The research focuses on the retrenchment of the Muslim community in response to real and perceived threat to variegated forms of fundamentalism, discrimination and segregation. As a way of understanding urban practices in predominantly Muslim areas, I utilize the theme of globalizing urban spaces, housing and the formation of urban neighborhoods. Delhi’s Islamic existence incorporates two different modalities – the contemporary informal Muslim neighborhoods built up due to Muslim migration, urban development; and the Islamic heritage of the 16th century Mughal and 11th century Sultanate architectural heritage.

I trace how the socio-spatial management of religious difference and dwelling choices are negotiated within the capital city of Delhi, India. One of the themes that emerge is the encounter of shared practices manifest in many forms– working together, living together and focus of Muslim worship. I highlight the built environment is a practice of living together emerging as a result of the anxieties of urban displacement. The research focuses on the ways in which Muslim marginal communities construct their own neighborhoods in Southeast Delhi, and the urban formats by which Hindus and Muslims choose to separate themselves spatially in variegated neighborhoods. It is the reconstitution of the neighborhood that I bring to focus; as symbols of community in space and social form, and deployed as a vocabulary of inclusion and exclusion.

My research attempts to highlight the new socio-spatial relation built by interlinking the reorganization of the capital Delhi entangled with separate ethnic and religious neighborhoods. I conclude that neighborhood and ethnic, religious minority differences shape spaces and practices of city making on the ground. By privileging the Muslim district, I capture the mix of elements which center on urban land use, housing, awkward encounters of heritage and everyday spaces in order to reveal the dynamics of violence alternating with living together.