Throughout history, women who defied dominant norms were seen as a threat to established systems of power.
Between the 15th and 18th centuries in Europe and colonial America, many women were accused of “witchcraft,” a fabricated crime through which existing power structures could mark them as societal threats.
The idea of the “witch” was fundamentally a deep fear of women who possessed forms of knowledge inaccessible to men.
Women’s understanding of bodies, nature, and healing was reimagined as black magic. In a world where men claimed monopoly over legitimate knowledge in medicine, religion, and science, women’s wisdom could not be recognized as rational or sacred.
Labeling them as “witches” discredited their knowledge and served as a justification for persecuting them while reasserting patriarchal control.
We like to believe that society has moved beyond the prejudices of the past, that the Age of Enlightenment, with its emphasis on science and reason, has left such irrational persecutions behind.
However, witch hunts are not mere relics of history; they persist today, only taking different forms and names. In Bangladesh, the growing public attacks on women who resist conservative restrictions follows a logic historically associated with witch hunts, in which women who defy dominant norms become targets of public accusation and punishment.
A historical look at the “making” of witches shows that the accusation itself functioned as a disciplinary mechanism to enforce obedience to male authority.
For instance, Isaac Ariail Reed (2007) demonstrates that in Puritan society the persistent fear of female independence among the leadership was met with control through marriage and strict norms.
Authority over women passed from father to husband, and any challenge to that framework was treated as both an act of rebellion against male authority and a violation of the perceived “God’s prescribed system of order.”
Under these conditions, nonconformity itself became a basis for suspicion which exposed women to accusations of witchcraft.
Although witch hunts have historically been linked to women, the idea of the “witch” has also been mobilized more broadly to serve the interests of those in power.
For example, Andreanna Hughes (2016) discusses how in Nazi Germany, Jews were scapegoated through fear-driven narratives which eventually led to the Nuremberg Laws and persecution.
During the Cold War, the US invoked the “Red Scare” to suppress suspected communists, under the guise of national security.
In both cases, witch-hunt logic enabled the elimination of perceived threats to power.
The fundamentalist reaction to last year’s major women’s rights march in Bangladesh, Narir Daake Moitree Jatra, showed how women who challenge the system of power in contemporary Bangladesh are represented as dangerous.
In one striking example, posters of women marching in solidarity were altered into grotesque, witch-like caricatures. It is ironic that merely gathering to demand an end to gendered violence, secure inheritance equality, and promote gender inclusivity was perceived as threatening, and that, like historical “witch-making,” women's resistance was reframed as deviant and monstrous.
A key reason women are demonized is to legitimize the violence inflicted upon them. Once portrayed as dangerous, they can be socially vilified.
A contemporary example of this is the rhetoric of “Shahbagi.” Like historical witch stereotypes, which required visual construction of the “witches,” women labeled as “Shahbagi” are associated with traits such dark skin, cotton sarees, teep, or black kajol, that have long been part of everyday Bengali appearance.
Today these markers are recast as “dirty” or “ugly” by those who do not want to identify themselves with these cultural markers.
Numerous incidents throughout 2025 showed mobs of men attacking women in public while calling them “Shahbagi,” which demonstrated how through the label itself they tried to legitimize the aggression.
Amid the ongoing culture war, rooted in our national quest to define what counts as “authentic” culture of Bangladesh, the rhetoric of “Shahbagi” raises a question: How did dark skin, the normative phenotype in Bangladesh, come to be coded as dirty?
Colonial legacies, which conditioned us to view indigenous bodies as inferior, continue to exert a powerful influence on the construction of such rhetoric.
Since the July uprising, a “pro-Bangladeshi” sentiment has emerged in the political landscape. At its core, the demand is legitimate: Bangladesh must assert its sovereignty by prioritizing the interests of its people rather than serving foreign powers, as occurred under the previous regime.
However, if the dark skin of the nation’s women and cultural markers such as the saree, teep, and kajol continue to be stigmatized, we must ask: How fully is this “pro-Bangladeshi” commitment being realized?
Just as historical witch hunts did not stop at women who defied the system, the label “Shahbagi” is no longer applied exclusively to women.
Men who resist fundamentalist demands are also labeled as “Shahbagi,” and hatred is incited against them.
Reports of mob lynchings against men for even slight deviations from radical religious ideologies have appeared throughout 2025.
The purpose was the same -- to instill symbolic fear and deter dissent.
The government’s silence in the face of these attacks had been telling, and it revealed whose interests it truly protects.
The trajectory of the state’s actions has been deeply troubling throughout 2025, and as it stands, 2026 will be a critical year, particularly in discussions surrounding gender.
The practice of labeling and stigmatizing individuals who challenge systems of power must be unequivocally halted.
This is essential for advancing a society safer from violence and mistreatment against women and minority groups in the months ahead.
Nabila Tasneem Anonnya is a Fellow and PhD student in sociocultural anthropology, Arizona State University, USA.
