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 changing? 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 year? 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 choice?
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)
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