By Vishnu Vasu –

Vishnu Vasu

Standing on my balcony facing Station Road, Mount Lavinia, I see hundreds of children walking past our apartment, dressed in crisp white school uniforms. It is a beautiful sight on a weekday morning. Their faces glow with joy, yet their shoulders hunch under the weight of backpacks stuffed with textbooks and paraphernalia. Even in this seemingly timeless rhythm, I sense the tremors of a distant wave reaching our shores, a wave called “woke culture.” Across the world, it is reshaping how children are taught to view identity, family, and society. What began in Western universities and social media feeds is now rippling across South Asia.

Rajiv Malhotra and Vijaya Visvanathan, authors of the controversial exposé Snakes in the Ganga, warn that these imported ideologies, if unexamined, could destabilize the social fabric of countries like India, and by extension, Sri Lanka. The book unveils uncomfortable truths about India’s vulnerabilities, arguing that Critical Race Theory and other Western frameworks are being recklessly mapped onto Indian society. Caste is equated with race. Marginalized communities, including Muslims and LGBTQ+ groups, are artificially clubbed together. Brahmins are cast as the “Whites of India.” Harvard University is described as Ground Zero, developing social theories in collaboration with Indian activists, journalists, and artists, a framework that, critics argue, risks destabilizing India’s civilization, educational institutions, governance, and social fabric. Indian corporates are importing Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) ratings aligned with global social justice movements. Some private universities propagate these ideologies under the banner of liberal arts, creating an ecosystem that, in Malhotra and Visvanathan’s words, threatens India’s sovereignty and cultural foundations.

India, our closest neighbor, offers a cautionary tale. In my last visit, I listened, read, and interacted with corporate employees in Chennai and Bengaluru. Large companies revise manifestos, work ethics, and governance frameworks to align with Western “woke” standards.

Sustainability initiatives, inclusivity programs, and transparency policies are paired with mandates to embrace diversity, flatten hierarchies, and promote mental health. On the surface, these measures are laudable. But beneath them, they quietly shape perception and behavior, encouraging employees to internalize diversity, gender sensitivity, and inclusion, values that spill beyond office walls into schools, neighborhoods, and homes. It is a quiet transformation, subtle yet persistent.

I want to pause here, because this is where my personal reflection matters. I am not against love or personal choice. Far from it. I believe every human being deserves to love and be loved. Choosing a partner based on one’s sexual preference is entirely personal. My novel Men in Sari explores this belief. It tells the story of a boy searching for fatherly love in a society that often denies such intimacy to young men like Arjun, the protagonist in my story. Along the way, he uncovers the rich oral history of Sri Lanka’s gay culture, a hidden narrative of longing, courage, and identity. Writing that novel, I realized something fundamental: love, desire, and identity are natural, beautiful, and sacred. My concern is not with love itself, but with the extremes of ideology that sometimes accompany movements like woke culture, where freedom can morph into dogma and inclusion into coercion.

Globally, woke ideology emphasizes radical personal freedom, fluid gender identities, and redefined family structures. In the United States and Europe, schools introduce drag performances to children, programs allow teenagers to question or alter their gender, and medical interventions for minors’ puberty blockers, sex-change surgeries, and lifelong hormone treatments—have become real experiences for many. Scholars like Miriam Grossman (Trans Nation) and Helen Joyce (Trans) document the profound psychological and physical consequences: depression, social isolation, and irreversible bodily changes.

I remember sitting in The Trans Café in New Delhi, overhearing a young couple discussing the UK court ruling on Keira Bell. Bell had transitioned as a teenager but later publicly regretted it, stating she was incapable at that age of understanding the lifelong consequences. I saw in their faces a mixture of shock and contemplation, they were ordinary people, not activists, but the weight of what society permitted minors to decide shook them deeply. These are the realities that Western “progress” sometimes overlooks: children legally allowed to make life-altering decisions, yet denied protection from irreversible harm.

India mirrors these pressures beyond corporations. Educational institutions and public discourse increasingly reflect Western influence. I watched a discussion with Rajiv Malhotra on YouTube about students in Mumbai and Delhi attending workshops on gender fluidity and sexual orientation from as young as fifteen. While teachers frame these programs as promoting fairness and equality, they subtly nudge impressionable minds toward prioritizing individual identity over family and community responsibilities. I met a young student in Bengaluru at “Ondede,” a human rights organization founded by Dr. Akkai Padmashali, which advocates for children, women, and sexual minorities. Curious but confused, he told me, “I just want to be myself, but sometimes I feel I am betraying my parents if I think differently.” His words were not rebellious, they were full of honest fear, a fear that comes when global ideals collide with centuries of cultural grounding.

Even in the West, frustration with extreme woke culture is growing. Broadcasters like Piers Morgan have highlighted cases where students were disciplined for minor infractions if their opinions contradicted progressive norms, and employees faced penalties for questioning gender doctrines.

Traditional art, literature, and celebrations have been canceled because they offended contemporary sensitivities. Ideology, when untethered from empathy and context, begins to erase diversity of thought, the very diversity it claims to defend.

Here in Sri Lanka, our context is different but fragile. Children grow up in extended households, enveloped by traditions, stories, and rituals that lend stability. Yet through the internet, social media, and foreign-funded NGOs, ideas arrive uninvited, sometimes undermining the very fabric that nurtures them. Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith recently issued a cautionary statement about programs allegedly promoting gender transformation in minors. He warns that these initiatives, under the guise of human rights, risk destabilizing marriage and the family unit—core pillars of our society. This is not theoretical speculation. It is a pressing social concern.

I recall meeting a mother in Kandy, at the Book Exhibition in June. She had read Men in Sari in Sinhala and shared how her ten-year-old son had come home asking questions about gender and identity he barely understood.

She confessed to feeling both pride in his curiosity and fear of the unknown. “I want him to think freely,” she said, “but I also want him to grow up safe, rooted in what we know works.” Her dilemma embodies the tension Sri Lanka now faces: between openness to ideas and protection of cultural foundations.

Globally, the extremes of woke culture show the dangers of uncritical adoption. Puberty blockers, surgeries, and ideological coercion are not mere statistics, they are lives, families, and futures permanently altered. Even well-intentioned programs, when carried to extremes, risk suppressing discussion, policing thought, and imposing conformity under the guise of inclusion. My worry, therefore, is not love, identity, or self-expression. It is the ideology that pretends to liberate but sometimes controls.

Parents, educators, and policymakers in Sri Lanka must recognize that our society has long relied on family-oriented guidance, communal wisdom, and intergenerational bonds. Children are neither legally nor emotionally equipped to make irreversible medical decisions. External pressures, from funding, social campaigns, or educational programs, can subtly influence domestic policy, steering it away from our cultural foundations. Leaders engaging with these new phenomena must be aware of global trends, case studies, geo-political alignments, art, and literature that illuminate the issues.

Too often, lobbyists and commentators operate with only a superficial understanding, touching what they read on social media without grasping the gravity of these shifts.

I am a bohemian. I walk the streets of Colombo often. I see glimpses of hope: grandparents sharing stories under banyan trees, families cooking together, young couples learning patience and empathy. These moments testify to the enduring power of love, tradition, and guidance. Woke culture is not merely a foreign fad. If left unchecked, it could reshape how our next generation understands family, morality, and identity, and in doing so, threaten the social fabric.

I want readers to understand this deeply, especially parents. Feel the urgency. Love in all its forms must be celebrated. Personal choices must be respected. But ideology, especially when imported wholesale without scrutiny, demands examination. When principles meant to protect and include are stretched into dogma, they risk silencing, policing, and destabilizing the very society that nurtures the love and freedom they claim to defend.

Sri Lanka stands at a crossroads. Our children deserve to grow up in stability, compassion, and resilience, guided by both tradition and enlightened thought. They deserve to learn about love, identity, and self-expression in ways that do not imperil their health, their families, or their future. And we, as a society, must watch, question, and act, not in fear, but with courage, wisdom, and care.

In the end, my message is simple: cherish love, celebrate choice, but scrutinize ideology. Woke culture can teach us much, but it can also blind us if we do not look carefully.

If we fail to examine it critically, we risk raising a generation adrift, rich in knowledge but untethered from wisdom, capable of freedom yet unaware of responsibility. It is our duty to ensure that the wave reaching Sri Lanka strengthens rather than erodes, enlightens rather than confuses, and ultimately, protects our children while honoring the timeless foundations of family and community.