The Indian pseudo-intellegentsia seems to have the morbid proclivity to make an anachronistic contention of everything.
Where's the anachronism? The revelation is plain and simple - the 21st century in real terms has not yet begun, it will do so only on January 1, 2001. The farce of second millennium has already taken place - the world celebrating the advent of the third millennium on December 31, 1999-January 1, 2000. So in literal terms, the question of women entering the 21st century does not arise. Men have not entered the third millennium either. Neither have dogs, cats and gods, and what have you. Why argue?
If anything, the statement at hand can be a proleptical proposition. Let us, for the sake of argument and for the sake of the convenience of the omnipresent ignoramus, accept that we are indeed in the 21st century. After all, where ignorance is bliss, it sure is a folly to be wise. Yes, the argument will lack conviction, but then don't all hypothetical assertions most often do precisely that?
Not matter how fashionable it might be to sound politically correct, these are indeed days of nihilist upstarts. So, sooner or later, all the non-sexist, gender-equality pretensions fall apart and they all come up with such sordid statements that reek of quasi-paranoic, patrairchal delusions. Why else should they doubt whether Indian women have entered the 21st century? Of course, on the face of it, they have. So have Indian men. And so have all others on this planet. Nobody, nothing, stays stuck in the time-space continuum. Why squabble about a foregone conclusion?
Ooops… one forgot! These are days of tyros and charlatans. Why else?
Ok, ok… let's grant these parvenus some sense of sensibility and assume that they are trying to sound figurative. (Of course, with nothing but sex on their minds, how can they not think of anything but figures.) One understands, the issue is along the lines of women not being so modern (them being the missfits of the third millennium). The corollary, needless to say, would be that men have always been ahead of their times (sic).
There is little point being drawn into an argument about a subverted statement made by pseudo-philosophical perverts. The point is not about who has entered the so-called 21st century - men or women; it is only sexists who try to find a gender angle to everything. The point is who, such redundant slang matches as this notwithstanding, has managed to enter the third millennium. Or rather, who is modern and who is not. The answer to this too ought to be a foregone conclusion - the progressive have, the obscurantists are the ones who want to take us back to the medieval ages.
Could we leave the progressive-retrogressive debate for another occasion?
