The Gregorian calendar stands on inaccurate science and exclusive Christian beliefs, while the Indian calendar gets the solar and lunar cycles right. Even if India doesn’t adopt the latter, it should at least teach the Indian calendar in schools
Why do Independence day, Republic day and Christmas come on the same day, each year, while the dates of Diwali and Holi keep changingIJ When I asked this question as a child, my mother explained that Diwali and Holi are Hindu festivals, unlike Independence day and Republic day, which are national festivals, and ours is a secular country. So, I grew up on the illusion that our secular national festivals are celebrated on a secular calendar.
Actually, our national calendar is named after Pope Gregory because it is the Christian calendar. Just to state any date we are obliged to say AD and BC, as in “India became independent on August 15, 1947 AD”. AD and BC are not secular terms. AD (Anno domini) means the ‘year of our lord’, and BC (Before Christ) means, ‘Before our saviour’. So, every time they state any date, all Indians must explicitly recite the key Christian beliefs that Jesus is their lord and Saviour. This propagates other key Christian beliefs, for example, that Jesus is a historical figure, not a myth.
The Christian calendar is the sole calendar taught in our schools. The dates stamped on our certificates and passports are based on the Gregorian calendar. But the Indian calendar is integrally linked to culture. The dates of all Indian festivals (including Buddha Purnima and Mahavir Jayanti) are defined only on the Panchang, while the dates of Eid are defined in the Islamic calendar. The exclusion of these other calendars alienates people from their culture.
Also, let’s examine matters scientifically and choose the calendar which is scientifically superior. The Indian luni-solar calendar gets both the solar and the lunar cycles right. Thetithi (lunar day) is scientifically defined, so each month always has 30 tithis, and corresponds exactly to one cycle of the moon. On the Christian calendar, the months are of varying durations — 28, 29, 30, 31 days — and have no correlation with the lunar cycle. Indeed, the key concern of Augustus Caesar was that the month named after him should be no shorter than the one named after Julius Caesar!
What about the solar cycle or the length of the yearIJ Many ‘educated’ Indians will today say it is 365 and one fourth day. That erroneous figure comes from the Julian calendar, which was the Christian calendar prior to the Gregorian. That error was huge, even by the standards of the fifth century Aryabhata. The true length of the (tropical) year is closer to 365.242 days.
This error has a curious origin. Science requires mathematics. But Greek and Roman numerals had no way to state precise fractions. Hence they settled for the easy fraction one-fourth. Because of this error (in the second place after the decimal point) the Julian calendar slipped by about a day in a century.
Christoph Clavius, who headed the Gregorian calendar reform committee, introduced Indian arithmetic in the Jesuit syllabus only around 1572. Even in 1582, few Europeans understood precise fractions. The Gregorian reform did not state the length of the year as a precise fraction, as Aryabhata did; instead it used a convoluted system of leap years.
Hence, the Gregorian calendar gets the length of the year right only on an average, across a thousand years, for its stated concern was a religious one: To fix the date of Easter, then the main Christian festival. Because of this error, the equinoxes still do not occur on exactly the same day each year.
A third criterion is economic. The Indian economy depends upon agriculture, which depends on the monsoon. The Indian calendar identifies the rainy season as the months of Sawan and Bhadon. This knowledge is embedded in the culture, including Bollywood songs. However, the Christian calendar lacks the concept of a rainy season.
Thus, from all three viewpoints of secularism, science, and economic interests, the Christian calendar is the worst possible choice, among all calendars, from the Indian to the Mayan. We should reject it or least teach the other calendars in schools and re-define Independence Day on one of our own calendars.
Why did India make so bad a choiceIJ Because of the colonial superstition that everything Western is superior and must be uncritically accepted. That superstition, essential for colonial exploitation, grew out of the foolish belief in racist superiority. Ironically, Clavius’s student Matteo Ricci sought scientific inputs from India for the Gregorian reform of 1582. Scientists today use the day count or Indian ahargana which came to Europe at the same time, but was baptised as the Julian day-number system by Joseph Scaliger, a contemporary of Clavius.
However, post-independence, our calendar reform committee, headed by the physicist Meghnad Saha, asserted that “for calendarical purpose (sic)” it is “unmeaning” to use the sidereal year, used in many Indian calendars. Saha offered no reasons for his claim, which was just another assertion of Western superiority. He was alienated from his culture and ‘forgot’ that the key calendrical purpose in India is the rainy season or moisture balance.
That is decided by global atmospheric circulation which depends not on the heat balance alone, but also on the sidereal motion of the earth (Coriolis force) and lunar tides (hence phases of the moon). Saha was an expert on heat, but never studied global atmospheric circulation which was impossibly hard to do in his time. Over the last decade, our meteorology department has often wrongly predicted a deficient or delayed monsoon, when it came on time on the Indian calendar.
India needs to abandon the colonial superstition that everything Western is superior and examine matters critically. In doing so, it will be faithful to the values enshrined in the Constitution — secularism, and (real) science — and serve our economic interests.
The writer has authored The Eleven Pictures of Time (Sage, 2003)
