Platform for Architectural Transfers in the Indian Ocean rim
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Writing Histories
Thursday 11 June 2026, 5.00 pm IST

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Respondent: Stephen Legg
(University of Nottingham)


Architecture of Fascism:
Sacred Labor and the destruction of Babri

Sara Ather
(Cornell University)

This talk examines the ritual processes that enabled the demolition of the Babri Masjid in 1992 by kar sevaks (Hindu nationalist volunteers) and the eventual construction of the Ram Mandir in 2024. It argues that the Ram Mandir project must be understood not only as a religious or
nationalist endeavor, but equally as a modern mass conversion project that repurposes sacred affect and spatial violence to consolidate a majoritarian political order under neoliberal
conditions. Focusing on the figure of the kar sevak literally, the talk explores how disenfranchised workers, especially lower caste laborers, were ideologically converted into agents of a sacred form of destruction. The paper aims to investigate how these transformations were made possible by broader neoliberal shifts in the 1980s that intensified informalisation of workers. The talk draws on journalistic archives, photographic archives and scholarly historical accounts to discuss the spatial mobilization campaigns led by Hindu nationalist groups during the 1980s, treating campaigns, routes, and consecration rituals as architectural processes rather than supplementary ‘context’, showing how temple building became a mass‑participatory infrastructure for Hindutva. Offering a material reading of architecture-as-process, I argue that the long planned campaigns that eventually led to the demolition of Babri, by the bare hands of Karsevaks, functioned as a pedagogical apparatus of conversion, not only replacing a historical mosque with the aspiration of a future temple, but equally reshaping the laboring bodies that enact this violence. This talk is a part of my larger body of work that investigates the role that architectural violence plays in enabling the politics of fascism in India.



Sacred Life of Dams: Myth, Ritual, and Nationalist Space in the Narmada Valley

Penny Unni
(Syracuse University)

Dams in India could be understood as spatial equivalents of the ‘Trojan horse’: while rewriting mythopoetic origins of sacred geographies, they come to conceal environmental degradation and nationalist agendas under water management and energy production. Ancient rites of pilgrimage are adapted to a modern developmental order in which the dam becomes a tirtha—sacred site. Worship sites submerged or displaced by dam construction are absorbed into new religious explanations, while emergent sacred sites are granted legitimacy through reinterpretation of myths and incorporated into pilgrim practices. This research examines how pilgrimage routes and rituals along sacred rivers blur the distinction between dam and temple, extending mythic meaning to bridge developmentalist narratives of gigantic infrastructures with religion. It argues that the sacralization of dams is both a part of ideological-material afterlife of colonial modes of territorial transformation and of nationalist statecraft. The research focuses on the Narmada River pilgrimage which has been reconstructed around thousands of dams on the holy river, its worship sites shifted and ritual practices altered. The Omkareshwar temple—the final point along the route— is examined through its architectural expression, iconography, and tourist media, to show how state-led eWorts to transform the Narmada into a destination for religious tourism instrumentalize mythic landscapes and narrative histories to broadly legitimize large-scale infrastructure. Attending to this process reveals that the stakes of dam construction exceed questions of infrastructure, extending to the terms through which landscape, history, and national belonging are made legible.