Wokes get as much flak from online rabble-rousers as liberals and seculars do. They invite ridicule, particularly from the Indian Right, for being what they supposedly are – aware of issues, socially conscious and full of empathy for the disprivileged – for no apparent reason. Most of it is driven by malice and hate like many things on social media and deserves to be treated with disdain. Yet assuming that a fraction of what they receive is justified, it’s important to understand why.
The Decoding Democracy series in Odishabytes, as we mentioned in the introductory note, aims to understand and explain the alienation of masses from the earlier order and make sense of the unceasing chaotic surround noise that has become a part of our lives. Signs of change in the public thought space are visible, and no change takes place without a reason or underlying causes. We have discussed how critical institutions lost the trust of people by falling short of their expectations. Inherently, humane concepts such as liberalism and secularism too face a crisis of credibility. If being liberal is viewed as anti-tradition, secular as anti-religion and the Left as anti-people, then it’s obvious that there’s a perceptional change. Woke is witnessing something similar.
The word ‘woke’ entered public consciousness rather late and came into common usage as the Black Lives Matter movement against systematic racism targetting blacks in a subtle and unsubtle manner in the US gained momentum over the last decade. It was full of positive connotations in the beginning, but now it is mostly used as a pejorative. In the US, the conservatives use it to insult the progressives of all denominations, not only those involved in or sympathetic to the cause of the blacks. Copycat online mobs in the media have latched on to the idea to deliver nasty blows to activists of all kinds.
The concern for humanity guided by the ideas of justice, equality, fairness and empathy is noble. It originates in superior consciousness born out of good education and love for fellow human beings. The simple understanding here is that not all people are equally privileged – socially, economically or culturally. It impacts the kind of lives they lead and perpetuates their status of inferiority vis-a-vis others. It’s only fair to try to take them out of the rot. When people fight for causes of tribals, lower castes, women, children and the differently-abled, and even animals, it speaks of their innate goodness. It’s these people who have fought entrenched vested interests and helped the lesser souls break barriers, both visible and invisible, through history. The spirit to strive for a perfect world with a moral compass is laudable. It should attract no pejorative reference.
Yet, scratching deeper, it’s easy to note that everything is not fine with this apparently ideal universe. Wokeism becomes a problem when it’s an acquired habit, not an organic one. In the case of the former, one is in love with the rituals associated with a cause, not necessarily the essence of it; in the other, the feeling for the subject and the dedication to it is genuine. For the former, it’s some kind of signalling of intellectual and moral superiority over others; for the latter, it’s a call of duty driven by compassion. In the Left ecosystem, they had those who sincerely believed in the ideology and those who were fashionably Left, the type which would talk of the poor while swirling expensive whiskey in a cosy five-star environment. There are those who would be on the ground genuinely working for tribal uplift and those who would speak about tribals from podiums in upmarket venues. They would defend Naxals as saviours of the jungle populace despite the knowledge that the former exploit the tribals more than the government.
Dog lovers in urban colonies would defend public feeding of the canines despite the grave risks it causes to children and passersby. Some would house dogs in their flats despite knowing that incessant barking is a problem for other residents around. Likewise, the fashionably liberal would make a public show of their dislike for traditional practices to deliberately hurt sentiments and rationalists would distribute chicken biryani on days of religious fasting. Those raising decibels on women’s rights might not even be aware of the real status of women in different communities and may not have experienced a typical Indian family life. It’s the pretentiousness that is under attack now. The woke is being called out as a show-off.
Also, when sympathy turns into a money-making proposition and an industry, it loses its moorings. In an article earlier, we discussed how civil society lost its credibility after it took the shape and character of the corporate sector. The scale of operation and balance sheet came to dominate their original purpose. Something similar is at play with wokeism. Some have turned it into a business proposition and the sympathy industry to thrive at the cost of the core cause. The perception on the ground is that all of them are into causes to make money. It may not be true, but people believe that the animal-loving groups, those taking up the cause of women and children or the socially disprivileged are out there are sumptuously funded and make good money. Once public perception goes deep it’s difficult to make corrections.
Nobody should shed a tear for the pretenders, but the real problem is the sincere and dedicated fighters for causes are losing credibility and ground too. They are being increasingly perceived as disruptors of normalcy and status quo rather than do-gooders. In economics, they say bad money drives out good money; here the attention-seekers are making good ones irrelevant. Social media has given some scoundrels a platform to keep running down higher human values, and they find traction. This makes the challenge for genuine wokes even tougher. If the trend continues then sympathy itself would go rare in society, as would compassion. It would make social awareness and consciousness of fellow beings irrelevant to the lives we lead. We would end up as lesser humans like those trolls.
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