Time to call out the hypocrisy of the woke ecosystem

Another week with a familiar scene: a protest advertised as a “harmless” campaign for clean air at India Gate, but behind the scenes, the same woke hypocrisy. A Delhi court had to send several so-called “environmental activists” to custody after investigators found links between them and the banned radical Maoist outfit, as videos allegedly connected them to networks long involved in Naxalite mobilisation. This episode of the so-called air pollution protest was never about the smog in Delhi, but reflective of a sinister trend wherein malicious actors are relaying and smuggling sympathies for a radical agenda behind the camouflage of a civic cause.

If pollution was their genuine concern, one wonders where this outrage was during the AAP government years, when Delhi’s air quality dipped to some of its worst levels. Not a whisper then. Because the pollution was never the issue, but a convenient mask for another ritual performance of anti-state activism, driven by an obsession with demonising Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the NDA government. These sloganeers were not suffering citizens gasping for air, but self-appointed “revolutionaries” who treat every national challenge as a chance to wage ideological war.

These activists come armed not just with posters, but with a sense of entitlement. They are urban elites who enjoy every luxury of modern life while romanticising poverty from a distance. They demand attention for the marginalised even as they refuse to share the lived realities of those they claim to represent. Their wardrobes boast global brands while their politics feeds on curated outrage. They talk endlessly of oppression yet recoil from any form of responsibility. If their solidarity with tribal communities were more than a prop, they could spend even a month in those regions. They prefer, instead, the comfort of metropolitan rebellion. After all, sharing the plight of people is far easier than helping them. This deranged mentality now seems to define the new woke ecosystem.

Once a movement claiming to fight for justice, wokeism has now become a force that polices thought, rewrites language, and punishes dissent with frightening zeal. It has abandoned persuasion and embraced coercion. Its goal is no longer equality or justice but compliance and retribution. These woke activists do not want debate but demand obedience. To them, any disagreement is a betrayal.

Consider how fast they change labels. Last year, the same coterie of activists was busy denouncing policies and people as “racists” or “fascists”. Now the insults have been updated: “traitor”, “extremist”, “MAGA sympathiser”. The stickers change, but the tactic remains the same: silence those who refuse to bow.

Such hypocrisy is not exclusive to India. Consider Canada, where activists recently rediscovered patriotism, only to oppose Trump’s tariffs. The same individuals who spent years mocking Canada as a colonial, racist nation suddenly wrapped themselves in the national flag when it served their politics. Patriotism, for them, is a costume that is to be worn for effect and discarded at convenience. The contradictions do not bother them because consistency has never been the point, because the goal is to maintain the illusion of moral superiority.

Even their crusades shift without shame. Tesla owners, once celebrated as pioneers of green living, now find their cars keyed and vandalised by exactly the activists who once hailed them. The environmental hero of last year has become the villain of today, as the narrative wheel has spun again. Someone must be blamed, and the criteria change with every ideological mood swing. The same script plays out in the recent pro-Palestine protests across Canada: national flags burned, Jewish community centres vandalised, hateful graffiti staining public spaces. Yet, the perpetrators defend this destruction as an exercise of rights and a misguided sense of justice. With their selective outrage, they demand freedoms from the same societies they deface.

And when this crowd moves online, the consequences are even more toxic. Digital mobs swarm anyone who expresses an opinion that they deem inconvenient. They hunt in packs, revealing personal details, contacting employers, demanding firings, and treating reputation as disposable. Even journalists now participate in this surveillance masquerade, even asking elected officials where they vacation, as though personal movements were criminal acts. This is not civic engagement but weaponised voyeurism.

The tragedy is that the loudest champions of tolerance have become intolerant beyond measure. Those who claim to defend inclusion now specialise in exclusion. Those who insist on justice refuse others the dignity of disagreement. They operate behind anonymous profiles, throwing stones while hiding their hands, intoxicated by the thrill of unearned moral authority. What we are witnessing is not progressivism but a revival of ideological absolutism dressed in ever-changing vocabulary. A new orthodoxy is born, demanding loyalty while pretending to be the voice of the oppressed.

What needs to be understood is the intellectual framework of this new orthodoxy that relies on three pillars. First, it flips discrimination upside down and then calls the inversion enlightenment. It declares that some groups must be shamed, sidelined, or denied opportunities in the name of historical redress. This is discrimination repackaged as justice. Second, it enforces a constantly shifting language regime. New terms appear overnight while old ones become forbidden without explanation. People are expected to keep up or face public shaming. This linguistic volatility ensures that ordinary people remain insecure, always scared of making a mistake, and always dependent on ideological gatekeepers who alone can interpret the newest rules. Third, it flourishes in academic spaces where ideological comfort has replaced intellectual challenge. Universities have allowed a new priesthood to emerge, a class that thrives on moral grandstanding while avoiding real engagement. Many campuses have become echo chambers, where predictable conclusions masquerade as scholarship and questioning them invites disciplinary proceedings. Instead of cultivating thought, these institutions manufacture conformity. The great philosopher Bertrand Russell once observed that many would rather die than think, but today’s activists, it seems, don’t even want to try.

Yet, the most startling feature of this ecosystem is its hostility to public order itself. It treats vandalism as protest, hate messages as expression, and street intimidation as civic duty. In what world does keying cars, desecrating symbols, blocking cities, breaking statutes or threatening opponents become a measure of political virtue? Protest, not destruction, has a place in democracy. And a functioning society rests on a simple principle: disagreements must be resolved through institutions, conversations, laws, not through mobs. When activism becomes a licence for criminality, it is no longer activism. It is also a way to derail a democratically elected PM Modi whom they have not been able to defeat at the electorally. For them ends justify the means, where is no ethics whatsoever in their tactical struggle for political power.

India, like many democracies, now faces a choice. We can allow a loud and ill-intended minority to dictate language, policing, culture, and public behaviour, or we can reclaim the fundamental principles like respect for differences, accountability for wrongdoing, and a refusal to normalise violence as political expression, as pillars that hold our society together. The woke ecosystem, which thrives on moral intimidation, survives only as long as people hesitate to call out its contradictions. But once exposed, its theatrics look precisely as they are: a performance of virtue without the substance of responsibility. As the world’s oldest democracy, we have to allow space for different thoughts and conversations, but not an inch to doublespeak activists who seek chaos. True democracy and justice require courage and clarity, not vandalism and selective outrage. It’s time to call out woke hypocrisy clearly and loudly.

Prof Santishree Dhulipudi Pandit is the Vice Chancellor of JNU.