In his Dussehra speech this year, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) Sarsanghchalak Mohan Bhagwat attacked ‘wokeism’, calling it an ideology that will cause the destruction of families and in turn, the society. Writing about Bhagwat’s speech, the RSS intellectual Brahmin Ram Madhav says that the “destructive, all-devouring forces” out to destroy the unity that Bhagwat referred to were “cultural Marxists or wokes”. The ‘wokes’ were accused of capturing institutions like media and academia, and plunging education, culture, politics, and social environment into chaos. Bhagwat held the ‘wokes’ responsible for creating a “vicious cycle of fear, confusion, and hatred” and described their modus operandi as “mantra viplav”.
The question that arises then is — what is ‘wokeism’? Never has there been any course on wokeism in Indian universities. I have never read about it, even though I am an ardent reader of new schools of thought. But the RSS seems to have done quite a bit of research on ‘wokeism’. After its almost ten-year-long rule through its brainchild Bharatiya Janata Party, with two powerful leaders – Narendra Modi and Amit Shah – at the helm, the RSS has now discovered that ‘wokeism’ is posing a ‘serious threat’ to family and societal life in India. What is this ‘wokeism’ that even the Indian intellectual circles do not know of?
What does ‘wokeism’ mean?
The Cambridge Dictionary defines woke as “aware, especially of social problems such as racism and inequality”. The word, which originated in African American English, began to be widely used in the 2010s as part of the Black Lives Matter movement. It came to encompass a broader awareness of social inequalities such as racial justice, sexism, and LGBTQIA+ rights, as well as ideas of the American Left, such as white privilege and reparations for slavery in the United States. “By the end of that same decade it was also being applied by some as a general pejorative for anyone who is or appears to be politically left-leaning,” says Merriam Webster.
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