A nuanced view on the woke and cancel cultures
Recently, on the passing of Queen Elizabeth II, social media was abuzz from the African continent to India where certain group of people were celebrating her death and holding her responsible for all the injustices her predecessors have inflicted upon the erstwhile colonial domains under Britain. Should she be blamed for that? In India some people on social media were asking for the Kohinoor diamond (which shines on the British crown) to be returned rightfully to India. In a recent survey about Prime Ministers in India, the founding premier of the republic, Mr. Jawaharlal Nehru comes the dismal last, where about 3% people rating him to be the best prime minister of India. I am sure the people who were surveyed were born much later than the death of Nehru. And many youngsters blame Nehru for ruining India these days. F.W. de Klerk, the last white President of a racist South Africa was instrumental in facilitating the power transfer to the first multi-racial Government and on his death bed, he apologized for the past actions of the apartheid regimes. On his death, people were seen jubilant, dancing on the streets and majority of them were young, born after de Klerk left office. These are some of the examples of Woke-ism as we know it. People imagine that they are suddenly awake or “woke” to new realities, based on the emerging facts. In this world of post-truth, fake news and TRP’s, it is challenging to remain aligned to the facts. Woke-ism, on the other hand is also linked to shouting out loud for injustices and the examples thereon are issues like “Black lives matter” or “Me too” campaigns, where at least some action happened. A woke culture that is shaped by biased political narratives and which is away from facts, whether emanating from the left or the right is dangerous.
In terms of cancel culture, it is about ostracizing certain people from either social media in specific or the society in general. In India some stand-up comedians were deemed “anti-Hindu” by a section of the society and were not allowed to perform in many states. One comedian was even arrested and sent to prison for a few months on the pretext of the idea that he was going to offend Hindu Gods by this jokes. Salman Rushdie, Indian origin author who lives in the United states wrote a book called, “The Satanic Verses” in the 1980s and his was one of the few stories of cancel culture in 1980s where the Ayatollah of Iran issued a fatwa for Rushdie’s death, slamming the book as “insulting Islam”. Many governments, including India banned the book. The result of this cancel culture which was driven by religious frenzy led to a young man brutally assaulting Rushdie in August 2022. Another recent example of cancel culture is people boycotting a movie in which Indian actor Aamir Khan had acted. The movie was a remake of Tom Hanks’ “Forrest Gump”. Some people asked the movie to be boycotted because Aamir has been critical of the Government in the past while some people said that he was privileged and promoted nepotism. The third group said that he showed the Indian army in bad light. The movie flopped badly and one does not know whether it was the effect of the boycott call or the call to “cancel” Aamir.
When the societies move towards populism or hyper-nationalism and where real data is in deficit, the likelihood of both woke-ism and cancel culture to get enhanced is high than ever before. As a repercussion, the real issues will unfortunately get unnoticed. Nevertheless, the right voices will also be heard by the society and as I thrive on hope, I am sure the right people will intervene at different intervals in chaotic societies.
