The last fortnight has seen a spate of New Year days. Last Monday, April 7, was Ugadi and Gudi Padva, for the people of Andhra, Karnataka and Maharashtra. This Sunday the 13th marked the beginning of the Tamil New Year (although there has been a fair bit of controversy over the decision of the incumbent DMK-led government to mark the beginning of the Tamil calendar with the month of Thai, which begins in the middle of January). The next day, the 14th, was Vishu for Malayalam-speakers, which coincided with Baisakhi in the Punjab and Bihu in Assam. A prominent exception to this spate of New Year days have been the Gujaratis, who celebrate their New Year on the day after Diwali.
The New Year is believed to spring from the transition of the sun from the raasi Meena (Pisces, or the Fish, among the constellations of the zodiac) to Mesha (Aries, or the Lamb). This year the transition brought to an end the Tamil year Sarvajithhu, and the beginning of the year Sarvadhaari. The Tamil calendar (which draws from the overarching Hindu calendar) consists of an iterative cycle of sixty years, with Sarvadhaari numbering twenty-second. It appears that the Tamil calendar does not follow an ordinal number year system. After consulting the almanac, my grandmother announced that the current year is the 5109th year of Kalyuga, and that is the only number that we seem to have, in contrast to other regional calendars in the country.
The Tamil year is a solar calendar while the calendars followed by the Kannadigas, Maharashtrians and Andhraaites are luni-solar, adhering to the movements of the moon as well as the sun. In the luni-solar calendars the months commence with the bright half of the moon. This explains why Ugadi (and Gudi Padva) is celebrated a week before the Tamil New Year (and Vishu, Bihu, Baisakhi et al). Ugadi always falls on the day after amavasya or the new moon. India's diversity extends to the various calendar systems followed by the people. For example, people in Maharashtra, Karnataka and Andhra follow the Shaka era with the year 78 CE as the base year whereas those in Gujarat, Rajasthan and India's neighbour, Nepal, follow the Vikram Samvat era with the year 57 CE serving as the base year. Another interesting difference between the two is that while both are luni-solar in nature, the months in the Samvat calendars commence with the dark half of the moon (that is, the day after the full moon), in a mirror-like contrast to the Shaka calendars.
Despite minor differences, all calendars are rooted in an overarching system that may be called the Hindu calendar, which marks the year to the season. The Hindu calendar is based upon the observations made by astronomers of the sub-continent from Vedic times, with modifications being made periodically. The calendar system that we follow today seems to have taken roots around the middle of the first millennium CE. Curiously, despite their advanced attainments in astronomy our ancestors ended up making a mistake with the Hindu calendar. This lay in the phenomenon called the precession of the earth’s axis, wherein the motion of the earth around the sun is influenced by the rotation of the earth’s axis. Our astronomers, while aware of the phenomenon, failed to take it into account while calculating the length of the year. Consequently, the Hindu calendar year is about twenty-three minutes longer than actual, which implies that it accumulates a whole day in about 60 years. In the approximately 1400 years since it was designed, the present calendar has accumulated (with a minor approximation) a whopping 24 days. In other words, our calendar presently tells us the seasons with a lag of approximately 24 days, which is almost a month! Thus, the New Year, which is supposed to mark the transition of the sun from Meena to Mesha (or Pisces to Aries) is actually out of sync with the actual event for the sun has already entered Mesha following the spring equinox, which falls on March 21. Similarly, our observance of Makar Sankranti, which indicates the movement of the sun from Dhanusha to Makara (or Sagittarius to Capricorn) is late by a period of approximately 24 days. The actual event marking this transition has already occurred in the form of the winter solstice (when the sun shines right over the Tropic of Capricorn) on December 22! In this way, we are no longer celebrating our festivals in the same seasons as our forefathers.
This error in our calendars has not remained uncorrected. Far from it. Newly independent India set up a Calendar Reform Committee in 1955, led by the physicist Meghnad Saha, which tried to rectify the gaps in the traditional calendar system. On the basis of its recommendations, a uniform Indian National Calendar encompassing the various regional calendars was adopted in the year 1957. However, the use of this calendar is confined to official usage. For popular purposes, we continue to use our erroneous regional calendars.
So, does this take the sheen off our New Years? I don’t know. We live in an age where the significance of events has largely been forgotten and replaced by a cultural symbolism. In other words, we celebrate many of our festivals, not so much for their underlying importance but more as a matter of custom: because they have been celebrated year after year by people before us. Thus, while there is compelling reason for us to rescue our calendars before they turn into an overly embarassing anachronism, there is still enough justification to see the joie de vivre and enthusiasm of our festivals as a cause for celebration in themselves. That, at any rate, is my two-bit!
(While this post draws from several sources in order to confirm the facts mentioned, for an interesting and a more detailed and complex discussion on the scientific error bit one may refer to http://www.frontline.in/: article entitled Medieval Mistake under the issue dated March 15-28, 2008.)
