Fury, faith, and freedom: Gender, religion and mental health in Bangladesh

This article explores the evolving discourse of mental health and the cultural construction of ‘madness’ in Bangladesh, tracing its trajectories from colonial governance under the Lunacy Act (1912) to the recent Mental Health Act (2018). Through a comparative lens, it examines how gender, religion, and the politics of emotion intersect in shaping the social meanings of mental illness – locally expressed through the idiom of paglami (pāgalāmi), that we translate here as ‘madness’. Drawing from historical and ethnographic sources, as well as contemporary narratives of resistance, this essay juxtaposes two case studies: Gurudasi, a Hindu widow whose ‘madness’ was criminalized under colonial law, and Farhana Muna, a Muslim comedian of Bangladeshi descent and a digital activist who reclaims her diagnosis of mental health as a site of empowerment through her project Munatics. Gurudasi’s tragic yet performative madness under post-1971 patriarchy, and Muna’s open, humorous narration of her own depression and anxiety under digital modernity, illuminate how women in/of Bangladesh reclaim agency through what society calls ‘madness’. From paglami as stigma to paglami as resistance, the article argues that these women, across generations and borders, transform ‘madness’ into a language of ‘fury, faith, and freedom’ that defies oppression and stands up to patriarchal forms of gender restrictions and silencing. ‘Madness’ becomes a terrain of contestation where female subjectivity, spiritual defiance, and social critique converge. This preliminary study concludes by calling for a more intersectional understanding of mental health in Bangladesh, attentive to gendered experience, faith, and postcolonial history.