Going Dolali/Doolally
BBC - WW2 People’s War - Going Deolali 1939-41
“I was sent to the military hospital at Deolali and became personally acquainted with the place that gave a well known expression to the Britrish Army! Even today many will know that ‘going dolali’ signifies someone who has a mental illness. The reason for this is that before the war the hospital at Deolali was where such patients were sent while awaiting a troopship to take them back to the UK. Thus ‘going dolali’ was literally true. India could be be an inhospitable place and a combination of extreme climates and hard soldiering took its toll.”
http://www.maharashtraitparks.com/itparks_about_nasik.htm
In the days of the British Raj, soldiers who cracked up under the stresses and strains of life in British India were invariably packed off to a military psychiatric hospital in the small Maharashtrian cantonment town of Deolali, near Nashik, to recover. Its name became synonymous with nervous breakdown; hence the English idiom “to go doolally”, meaning to become insane or eccentric.
