If there is one word in the past century that started as one thing and ended up as something else, it has to be this – “woke.” Considered to be the hot badge of enlightenment, especially in the context of the American society and its inherent ‘love’ for the Blacks, the word has now gained notoriety for being a roadblock to free thinking and expression. Talk of irony dying a thousand deaths!
The phrase “stay woke” entered the American conscience in the 1930s but it wasn’t until 2017 that it was added to the Oxford English Dictionary. Looks like Oxford took its own sweet time to make up its mind about letting the ‘wokes’ into its pages. Nevertheless, it was still too soon because today, the wokes are known as just a bunch of whiny dudes, who are finding fault in everything everyone else is doing, be it a tweet, a post, a speech, or a public comment. Every little thing is enough to offend their hyper-sensitive minds and then they bring out their claws to rip apart the character as well as the life of their “offender.”
The woke culture began as a way to create public awareness about the socio-political conditions of African-Americans. Thus, it is really sad that the recent ‘Black Lives Matter' movement should have exposed the fraudulent credentials of its propagators, that too thousands of miles away from America, in the new India, where everyone has a right to free speech, without the accountability, of course!
In the case of India, however, as is with everything, the woke culture is inherently tied to religious moorings
After all, where is the fun in that! The irony of the matter is that these ‘wokes’, who could be anyone with a smartphone, a student, housewife, celebrity-stalker, disgruntled employee, or simply a bored young millennial, end up restoring the same system, which they claim to be “opposing”. Look at the case of Harvey Weinstein, the Hollywood movie Moghul, serving a 23-year sentence for rape and battery. He was at it for years and everybody around him, including the movie stars the world is so much in love with, knew what he was up to. But there wasn’t a squeak anywhere! It was only after the New York Times spent months researching and preparing their first news story on Weinstein, that the grenade went off and those posing as “wokes” were jolted into submission. The tsunami of social media comments, interviews, confessions, admissions that followed was a perfect example of a ‘woke orgy’.
In the case of India, however, as is with everything, the woke culture is inherently tied to religious moorings. This is something corroborated by a recent Pew Survey, which was conducted between November 2019 and March 2020. People get offended as easily by a religious comment as by the mere existence of a religion. Do you see the oxymoron there? So, on one hand, you have ‘woke’ social media warriors commenting on everything from the cow to beef, on the other hand, there is that elite section of Indian celebrities, mostly out-of-work Bollywoodians, who find a fault in everything that the majority community is associated with, be it Rakshabandhan, Karvachauth, or that arch-nemesis of every ‘liberal-woke’, Modi!
So, you get the picture? It is a real mess out there and till this woke culture comes of age, this mess is only going to get worse!
By Wokeflix, a not-so-woke social media presence that keeps their identity private, their views totally personal, and their loyalties national.
