#146 Woke Up On The 'Right' Side

India Policy Watch: Countering Wokeism&#160;<br/><br/>Insights on burning policy issues in India<br/><br/>&#8212; RSJ<br/><br/>You know a term has entered the zeitgeist when it reaches your family WhatsApp group that&#8217;s kept alive by aunts and uncles forwarding every dubious message that confirms their biases. So, when I received a message on the group that urged us to celebrate this Diwali with firecrackers to show the &#8216;wokes&#8217; their place, I realised the word has crossed some kind of a threshold. And then I noticed social media was full of similar assertion of Sanatan Dharma against wokes (and Christians too). Some kind of international conspiracy of the wokes had to be thwarted, our religion and tradition had to be reclaimed and, apparently, lighting a firecracker was the place to start. Another day, another assault on our dharma and another lightening response by us because we are ever vigilant now. <br/><br/>And that set me thinking about wokeism. Is it a nihilistic, virtue signaling, leftist movement that imagines victimhood, rejects tradition and reduces everything to identity? Or, is it an easy catch-all pejorative that serves as a convenient fig leaf for bigots of every shade to run down any progressive, liberal idea without engaging with their merit? Are all anti-woke responses the same? Or, is there a right and a wrong cause to protest wokeism?&#160;<br/><br/>Blooming Of The Conservative Mind<br/><br/>I thought it will be useful to go back to the original text that questioned &#8216;openness&#8217; and relativism to search for answers. Allan Bloom&#8217;s <a href="https://www.amazon.in/Closing-American-Mind-Education-Impoverished/dp/1451683200">Closing of the American Mind </a>(1987) was the earliest and remains perhaps the most intellectually stimulating challenge to the dogma of liberalism that had take over the academic and media bastions in America. Bloom, a professor of Philosophy at University of Chicago, wrote the book based on the &#8216;sample&#8217; of students he taught ove