[2] It is a centre of the neighbourhood's economy, with money changers, guesthouses, travel agencies and gift shops surrounding it and catering to the missionaries that visit the Markaz.

[5] The Banglewali Masjid (Bungalow Mosque) was built in Nizamuddin by Mirza Ilahi Baksh, a relative of the last Mughal emperor, sometime after 1857.

[7] Noticing that his own direct teaching would be inadequate to the task, in time, he evolved the practices of tabligh that now form the foundation of Tablighi Jamaat.

Training them in the preaching work became the main activity of the madrasa, gradually turning the Banglewali Masjid into a markaz (centre or headquarters).

[14] According to The Milli Gazette, the senior members of the Tablighi Jamaat from around the world met at the Pakistan regional markaz at Raiwind in 2015 and resolved that the organisation would be governed by a shura.

[17][15] The mosque organised a large congregation in March 2020, attended by approximately 9,000 missionaries, with the majority from various states of India,[18][19] and 960 attendees from 40 foreign countries.

The government implemented a nationwide indefinite lockdown on 24 March, and the adjacent police station issued a notice to the mosque the same day, asking for the closure of the building.

[31] Leaders of the mosque received widespread criticism from the Muslim community for holding the congregation despite a ban on public gatherings being issued by Union government authorities in Delhi on 13 March.

[32][33] Several media houses were accused for instigating communal Islamophobic sentiments by blaming Indian COVID-19 outbreak on the congregation and for spreading misinformation.

[34][35] “The Tablighi Jamaat phase saw hate speech directed against one entire community-Muslims-with very visible impact on the ground such as calls for economic and social boycott and physical violence against Muslims.

The most notorious incident was Arnab Goswami of Republic TV falsely portraying an assembly of migrant workers at Bandra railway station demanding from the government to make arrangements for them to return home during the COVID-19 lockdown as an assembly of Muslims gathered purportedly on the orders of the imam of a local mosque in an attempt to deliberately spread the viral infection among Hindus in an act of biological terrorism.